


Caraluna

by DiazTuna



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - 1990s, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-06 09:34:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8745064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiazTuna/pseuds/DiazTuna
Summary: Emma is an accidental and skeptical paranormal investigator, Henry is a boy who wants to break the curse that transforms everyone in Storybrooke into something monstrous every full moon. He brings her home to meet his mother, who he believes cast the curse. Set in 1996.





	1. Prologue or How Tolstoy was Right

**Author's Note:**

> This AU was inspired by the X-Files, Stranger Things and mainly this Penny Dreadful quote: "All the broken and shunned creatures. Someone's got to care for them. Who shall it be if not us?" 
> 
> A million thanks to abluedragon who put up with my rants, typos and general Tuna-ness. To Evie for reading when I second guessed the wall of text and to my artist for putting up with my very, very long emails.

_ There is a large house overlooking the sea in town. It’s the finest house there, old as the town itself. Made of wood and brick, all white. It has an attic and a basement, floorboards that creak and an apple tree in its backyard. It is not a happy home. Perhaps it had been in the past, when a different family lived there. But now there is a daughter, father, and mother. Two are especially miserable today as another large gathering has been planned for the evening. All the town is to come, everyone is invited and no one will decline. They are too scared of the mistress of the house to reject the invitation. The daughter knows her mother and father’s story. Mother had been a young woman living at the edge of town, whose family had run the mill for centuries but she’d lived in a dilapidated house with a father too weak to work and a mother who had long left them and that life.Then there had come a young man with thick black hair, bronze skin and an accent no one in town could place.  She hadn’t loved him but she’d married him nevertheless. Most townspeople believed it to be a spell she’d cast on him because her mother had always been heartless. But the girl knows the truth and it’d been much more mundane. Father had money and mother had fair skin and a name easy on the townspeople’s tongues. That’d been enough for both families. Still, the rumors about her mother being a witch never did die. The girl knows all about them but what she doesn’t say is that the truth is much worse.  _

_ She is a witch too, either by blood or teaching. The girl isn’t sure. All she knows is that she doesn’t quite measure up to mother. Soft-hearted and hard-headed she calls her. The girl would like nothing more than to get her boots muddy and ride her horse in the cold autumn air. There is something about the colors and the way her hands stiffen inside her gloves. But none of that is to be had today. Today her pants are to be yanked off her, her boots cast aside and her dark hair pulled so tight that people can be tricked to believe it’s thinner than it is. Today she will be forced into a white dress that is too tight for her, gloves that make her hands itch and shoes that make her look taller. Things to distract from the darker glow of her skin. The girl’s mother had come from nothing and now she is something, someone. Tonight is about, once again, reminding all who live here who she has become. Terror in fine clothing.  _

_ The girl looks at her reflection, now that the Sun has set, and she can hardly breathe in her dress. She supposes she looks beautiful but she cannot recognize herself.  _

_ “Now, don’t you look more like my daughter, dear?” Her mother says pressing a kiss to her cheek. It’s a threat.  _

_ “Yes, mother.” It’s what she has been taught to say.  _

_ “Tonight is an important night. Don’t you forget.”  _

_ “Isn’t it always?” She tries to keep her tone polite and submissive. It doesn’t always work.  _

_ “Don’t be insolent, child.” Her mother grabs her face, careful not to smudge the recently applied powder only to let go. “Now drink this.” She hands her a champagne flute that has never belonged to anyone but her.  _

_ The girl takes the drink hesitantly and wonders if this is some sort of test she is meant to fail. She looks over at her mother looking for a clue in her expression.  _

_ “You are to be eighteen next year and this is hardly new to you,” She eyes her with something that scares her. “Well drink it you silly girl, it isn’t poisoned!” _

_ And so she does, in two gulps the drink is gone. The mother leads her out of the room and into the party.  _

_ No, the drink hadn't been poisoned but it'd been something else the girl learns. Not simple champagne, one glass could hardly make the lights brighter and the sounds sharper. But she ignores it because this is her mother’s test. Laced with magic and maybe even hatred. The music from the quartet brought from the city and hired for this night does nothing to quiet the ever growing voices in the girl’s mind. Through a dance with a grey-haired man she cannot bear to touch the girl closes her eyes in hopes that maybe if she does not see evil she will not hear it. But they only become louder and soon she realizes they belong to everyone in the room. The man thinks of nothing but her body and repulsed she excuses herself. Because she cannot afford to be impolite.  The girl takes a drink from a server hoping the burn will quiet her mind but it does her no good. _

_ Soon she is filled with every thought about her. The girl hears about her many names, lies and truth all mix in. She hears whispers about her wandering eyes when speaking with the girl at the malt shop, angry shouts about the way she and her father stroll around town shamelessly speaking Spanish. Witch and every word up to it clouds her mind. It is not long before the girl is filled with rage, her magic threatening to spill out from her. It’s fear that pulls her back from the abyss and makes her remember that mother is indeed watching. So she waits and waits and lets her emotions brew dark within herself. It is not until midnight that the girl leaves the house overlooking the sea.  _

_ She runs on bare feet and soils her white dress, and her skin bleeds. The girl goes past the woods and follows the water to the hidden caves. This is where she has been called tonight, she knows. This is where the magic, violet in the moonlight, wants her to be. The water is cold when she steps into it. She stands in the dark and lets her blood and magic flow out of her. Vengeful and wrathful and she swears and curses. And the words become one with the violet of the magic and the white of the moon. The girl wishes that everyone born in this God forsaken town by the sea will become the thing they hate the most. She curses them to be alone in their pain, for another to never see it nor hear it.The girl wants them to live in shame, just as she does now. And so the word becomes binding, a cruel sentence. A just punishment, perhaps.  _

_ And there the girl lets herself go in the salt of the water and looks up at the full moon.  _

 


	2. Paranormal Practice or the Dangers of Wrongly Placed Ads

It’s the end of the day, well almost. It’s dinner time, same difference. Emma’s stomach practically growls in protest and she resists the urge to tell it to calm down as she dials the number for the quickest take-out she knows. She curls the phone cord around her fingers as she puts in an order that should really be for two people. It’s been a long day, she deserves it, she rationalizes. Nothing like an order of six spring-rolls to go with your daily dose of please-stop-running-you-dick that comes from being a bail bondsperson. And really, Emma’s day shouldn’t feel much longer than it had been but she’d also dealt with one of  _ those _ customers today. She doesn’t know how exactly she got stuck with them, but here she is. Answering strange calls, both to her phone and apartment, at odd times during the day. Maybe it’s to do with the fact that it’s an old building and that her place used to be an office of sorts, Emma’s door even has the old frosted glass and old-school blind. 

Today it’d been a little old lady, the kind she couldn’t say no to without feeling guilty for the rest of the week.

“It’s in my attic, you see! Pesky thing that it is.” Her hair was almost purple and had sent Emma away to her own kitchen to make her a cup of tea. 

“What is, Mrs…? She’d tried being patient because the old woman could have just been lost after all. 

“Mrs. Kaminsky. The poltergeist, of course!” Mrs. Kaminsky had taken a sip of the tea and grimaced. “I don’t have my poor Harold around anymore to go up there and well, I want it gone.” 

“And you want me to..uh...make it gone?” 

That old lady had fixed Emma with the sweetest and scariest glare she’d ever encountered. 

“Yes, yes! The darn thing keeps rearranging my paintings, hiding my keys, breaking my china. A lady of my age, I will die of a heart attack next. It’s terrorizing me!” 

And that’s how Emma  had ended up at four forty-five of this afternoon in an attic making up latin words, banging on walls and spraying seltzer water that was supposed to be holy on the walls of Mrs. Kaminsky’s attic. Right after she’d chased Frank O’Donald down for skipping on his bail. The old lady had pressed a crisp ten dollar bill to her hand after she was done with her “little exorcism” and even that had felt dirty. But what could she have done? It made the old purple haired lady feel better and she’d be using to tip the delivery guy tonight. Usually, if she could be convinced into doing this kind of thing, she’d didn’t mind the extra bucks because it entailed getting into something gross.Getting stuck in a gutter, freezing her ass off at midnight because  _ this is when it appears, I swear!  _ There was that time at the pet cemetery with a scared-shitless couple and the irony hadn’t been appreciated. But the fifty bucks sure had been. No, Fluffy had not been haunting their backyard, it lay very still and very decomposed in its box. 

She plops herself on her couch and pushes off her boots as she muses over all this. Emma Swan, accidental paranormal investigator? The official title doesn’t matter anyway, considering it’s a fake job consisting of being the human placebo. Because that’s what she is, she doesn’t think there is ounce of credence to these things. With the blue light of the TV reflected on her face, she remembers that maybe this had started a little earlier than she supposed. One of her foster mothers had been one of those wicca types, nice if a little..kooky. She’d said Emma had this magic and light about her, when all Emma remembers having at that age is a bad temper and scrapes on her elbows. Maybe weirdoes have a weirdar so she can’t exactly blame them for finding her. And they  _ always _ find her. Not that she knows how any of this works. Or that she believes in any of it. There are no ghosts, poltergeists or the like just like there aren’t any fairies or kisses that bring someone back from the dead. They’re all the same thing anyway, if she remembers her high school English well enough. Fears and hopes but with names and faces. 

Her stomach growls louder than her thoughts and she looks at her watch. Twenty minutes, they said. She’s thinking that only twelve minutes have gone by when there is a knock on the door and she might just kiss the delivery person. Her sock-clad feet carry her to the door and she opens it without thinking to open the blind and look through the glass first. And there he is, a boy with a big smile and brown eyes. 

“Are you lost, kid?” Emma asks a little out of it. Because he doesn’t look lost, maybe a little sheltered and naive judging by his bright white sneakers and the backpack that's bigger than him. And sure enough, the kid shakes his head. 

“I know I got the right place. Emma Swan, right?” 

“Yeah, but you look a little young to be delivering food.” He goes straight into the apartment before Emma can get another word in. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” 

“I don’t have a lot of time to explain, so hear me out.” He says as he makes himself at home by sitting at her dingy kitchen table. 

“You’re going to have cut the cryptic act, kid.” Emma crosses her arms looking at him. “You got a name or is Mystery just what your friends call you?” 

“Henry Mills.” He says smiling like that name means something wherever it is he comes from. And maybe that toothy smile is a little disarming.

“OK, so what are you doing here, Henry Mills?”

He pulls his backpack to his lap and pulls out magazine cutout. “I found your ad and thought you could help me!” 

Emma  shakes her head in disbelief and she's pretty damn sure her mouth is open in shock. “My a... what, now?” 

The kid furrows his brow. And holds up the cutout for her to see. Emma sits at the table,confused as she’s ever felt, and takes the ad from Henry. 

 

_ Haunted by ghosts, petrified by strange sightings or afflicted by a witch’s curse? Call Emma Swan! _

 

She stops reading after that cringe worthy sentence and well...she guesses it wasn’t a weirdar after all. But, just who the hell did this? Why? 

“Where did you get this?” She lays the thing flat out on table, it’s embarrassingly colorful. It looks like Halloween swallowed a box of crayons and then threw up. 

“Paranormal Monthly, issue 45.” He says confidently but then tilts his head when he registers the look on her face. 

“I didn't place the ad, kid. I don't know what to tell you. It’s probably someone's idea of a joke.” 

“But….don’t you deal with this kind of stuff?” His shoulders sag and he wrings his hands together. This isn’t going how he expected it go.

“Sort of. Not really.” Emma doesn’t know exactly what to tell him when he is looking so dejected in her kitchen. “Kid, shouldn’t you be home?” 

“Yes…” He says guiltily. “But this is important so...I..” 

“Ran away?”

Henry nods without looking at her. “OK why don’t let me call your mom...and” 

“NO! She can’t know I’m here.” 

“She must be worried sick, kid.” 

“Please?” 

Emma licks her lips as she mulls over the situation. She can persuade him given enough time, maybe even hearing him out could help. 

“Tell you what. You tell me what’s so important over dinner and then we send you straight home. Deal?” She’s sure that a dumpling or two will be enough of a bribe to get him to call his mother. 

“OK.” Henry says and it’s too obvious that he is not committed to keeping his end of the deal. 

“You like Chinese?” 

She’s pretty sure he’s the type of kid that isn’t allowed take-out unless it’s an  _ occasion _ and it eats out of an actual plate because he bulldozes through it. Even licks the grease off his fingers. He’s still got some of his baby fat around his cheeks and his hair has been cut recently. The grey and red scarf looks expensive over his tan skin. He is loved and wanted, she can’t help noticing. It’s sort of like picking at a scab, an old habit that will never die. 

“My town is cursed.” Henry says after she lets him have the last spring roll. He doesn’t sound scared like most people do, if anything he’s practically bouncing in his chair. 

“Oh?” Emma’s gotten good at this, not crushing people’s spirits but she doesn’t have to try very hard with him. “Why do you think?” 

“Every full moon the town gets...I don’t know... different. I swear there’s a werewolf!” His expression changes and he must be more intuitive than she had given him credit for. “You don’t believe me.” 

“Kid..well..”

“I have proof!” He shifts quickly in his chair and pulls out polaroids from his backpack and lays them out on the table. Probably taken with a camera he got for his birthday. 

Emma takes a good look at them, animal tracks on the ground, fallen trees, maybe a few hand prints in mud. She bites her lip as she piles them up and hands them back. There is nothing extraordinary about them, but she won't tell him that.

“And no one in town suspects anything?” 

“Aaah no. They’re all cursed?” He says like it’s meant to be obvious. “That’s why I need you.” 

“To break the curse?” She laughs because he’s right. She doesn’t believe. 

Emma doesn’t know how is it that a ten year old from a small town in Maine managed to work her but she’s now in her car with a kid who really shouldn’t have eaten the candy bar she keeps in the Bug’s glove compartment. Her plan had not worked, Henry had outright refused to call his mother and he’d been too smart to mention where he was from before he got her to agree to drive him back. He’s got bite, alright. When Emma had said she’d put him on a bus, he’d said she’d have no way of knowing he made it home OK and asked if she really wanted that on her conscience. For all she knows, he could get off at a random stop, get lost, or  _ worse.  _ “Fine!” She’d thrown up her hands in the air, grabbed her keys and pulled on her jacket and told him to follow. 

“So how come you’re not cursed?” She asks watching the headlights of other cars pass her by and the trees becoming thicker as the night gets darker. 

“I have a theory,” Henry’s looking directly at her, inspecting her face for any sign of non-believing, she is aware. “I think only people born in Storybrooke are cursed.” 

“And you weren’t?” 

“No, mom brought me home from Boston three weeks after I was born,” This time she can feel him looking away from her to clarify. “I’m adopted.” 

And Emma keeps from saying  _ lucky _ out loud and tightens her grip on the steering wheel. She gives him a nod and a smile she hopes comes off as understanding. Perhaps this is where all this is coming from except he doesn't know it yet. 

“I think my mom did it,” He says more quietly, playing with his jacket’s zipper. “Cursed the town, I mean.” It’s a painful conclusion, one that forced him to look through love. Not that Emma would know about that. 

“Why do you say that?” She asks carefully, sparing him a glance. 

“See, ever since I was little she’d give me this tea with a lot of honey in it. Added cinnamon later when I asked. She said I always had trouble sleeping and that it would help me. Thing is, it only ever knocked me out under a full moon.”

“So…?” 

“So there’s something she doesn’t want me to see! I didn’t drink it one night and she was just  _ gone.  _ Not in her room, not anywhere.” Henry’s breathing gets a little quicker. 

“Kid, that doesn’t mean that she…you know.” 

“But then next morning she was there. And I could tell she was trying to hide how tired she was, a little too hard maybe.” He waits for Emma’s interruption but she’s decided to just let him finish, for both their sakes. “So I watched her. The closer we got to the last full moon she got...I don’t know, like it was difficult for her to keep it all in. But then I noticed it isn’t just her, everyone in town starts acting weird around that time.”

“OK?” She still quite hasn’t made out the picture the kid is trying to paint. 

“The morning after, she always seems to be the only one who knows what happened. Everyone looks miserable, but she looks...worse.” He sighs, his mood obviously changed. If he’d been excited back at her place now he just seems blue. Emma feels that guilt that gets to her when dealing with this type of thing, but this time there's something else to it. Something that sets off alarm bells in the back of her mind. She doesn’t ask anything else.

They stop at one of those ghost gas stations, the kind with the flickering fluorescent lights because this Storybrooke is one of those straight-out-stories- places that's probably between the woods and the sea just in the middle nowhere and somewhere. She’s lost. Going into the store is like walking into another dimension because there is that dying barely there music coming off a radio, a man is behind the counter with a shotgun mounted on the wall behind him. He has a large scar over his eye and a dirty pair of overalls over his shirt. His greasy fingers are polishing something that is probably better left unknown. 

“Hi,” She says grabbing a map, a can of coke and bag of cheap cookies. “I’m a little lost. Do you know how to get to Storybrooke?” 

“It’d be best if you just turned around and left.” He says ringing her up. “Folks there don’t take kindly to strangers. Mind you, it wasn’t always like that.” 

Emma wonders if there’s something in Maine’s water to make everyone this crazy. “Driving a kid back to his mom’s there. I really want to get him home.” She tells him with a smile that is definitely rude. 

“Take the next two exits to the left and then follow the road and go across the covered bridge.” He hands her change practically leering at her. 

“Ready?” Emma asks as she tosses Henry the bag of cookies. 

“Yeah.” He says lightly, like he’s looking forward to going home. And taking one last look around the gas station, she can’t blame him. 

Someone must have painted this scenery, that’s her first thought. Because it looks like it belongs behind grainy film, out from Night Gallery minus the Serling narration.The trees vary between a deep blue and gray in this light, the moonlight. Emma tries not to think about that particular detail. But it’s hard to do when it’s only them in her Bug and the moon on the road. No other cars around and she turns up the radio some because Emma draws the line at the sound of crickets. They get to the covered bridge and this time she can’t stop herself. 

“Are you kidding me?” She says driving through it, praying it won’t collapse. 

“Don’t worry Emma, the town’s cursed not haunted.” Henry says like that’s supposed to make sense or make her feel better. 

Either way, she wouldn’t have been able to guess either one because it’s the nicest place she’s been to. Almost looks like a movie set, bright colors on the houses, themed mailboxes, red fire hydrants. Not a single thing out of place, all store signs are even painted in cursive for God’s sake.

“Town seems pretty un-cursed to me. And look, full moon and everything.” 

“It’s not the right time yet. ‘S only the second moon.” Henry says without a hint of hesitation.

“Right. So now there’s rules? I don’t remember any of this from the Wolf Man.” 

“The what?” He furrows his brow while looking at her. “And not rules, just stages.” 

Emma can’t believe this makes sense to him. “You really have it all figured out, don’t you?”  

“I’ve kept a journal.” He says proudly.

At that she smiles with a shake of the head.  Henry, reluctantly, gives her directions to get to his house. He’d only given in because _ there’s still tomorrow night. _ It shouldn’t come as surprise that he lives in the biggest house in town, overlooking the sea. The type of house you only get to see in holiday movies, it probably always smells of Christmas in there. 

“So….”Henry says looking ahead of them, completely trying to ignore that they’re outside his house. 

“You do know you’re going to have go in eventually, right?” 

“Yeah...not now?”

“Kid…”

The decision is made for him when the front door swings open and out comes his mother.

“Henry!” 

He gets out of the car and so does Emma, not knowing exactly what the protocol is for bringing a stranger’s son back to her. And that’s when she feels it, the air on her skin almost like electricity. No, this is just all of Henry’s talk and that creep from the gas station. But when she turns to look at Henry’s mother, with her short dark hair and tear stricken eyes she thinks that maybe it isn't. And not just because she is not what Emma had expected her to be, not with that fitted grey dress and the frankly unbelievable face. There is something else here she can't really name.

She hugs him tightly to her, tighter than Emma’s ever seen a mother hug anyone. 

“Henry, where have you been?!  I’ve been so worried about you! What happened to you?” And she notices a slight tremble in her words, like she’s too scared of the answer. 

Emma watches him shrug and race past her into the house, leaving his dumbfounded mother alone with her. Which is not good, because she can’t keep herself from looking at the way her lips part and how she isn’t wiping away at her tears. It’s quite the brave face she’s put on.Her back is suddenly straight and she’s giving Emma a smile that she has no doubt practiced. 

“I suppose you’re who brought my son back?” Her voice is so different from the one that had cried after her son. Not as warm, not as soft. 

“Hi.” And because she can’t say anything else Emma knows this is trouble. So much trouble. 

“How would you like a glass of the best apple cider you’ve tasted?”

Emma wishes her drink had ice in it so that the clink could distract her or hell, cool her off. They’re in her study, Regina Mills’s study, that is. And still somehow the air doesn’t feel less electric, if anything it seems to make Emma’s skin feel prickly. But that’s nothing to do with a curse and more with how the other woman holds herself. The way her eyes are set on looking at Emma and the careful sips she takes from her drink. She’s watching her. And she isn’t entirely sure that she wants her to stop. 

“Kid’s having a rough time. Happens.” Emma offers her after Regina apologizes for Henry having pulled away from her life. 

“You have to understand. Ever since I became mayor, balancing things has been tricky. You have a job, I assume?” She doesn’t miss the attack in her words, as if Emma is capable of judging her.

“Uh, I keep busy, yeah.” She shifts her footing as she answers as honestly as she can. 

“Now imagine having another job on top of that. That’s being a single mom,” That’s the root of it, Emma realizes looking at the way her tone turns less icy. Regina’s eyes betray the thing that is eating away at her. Henry ran away from home, from her. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately.” 

“I’m sure it’s just that curse thing.” Emma says before she can stop herself. 

“What curse thing?” Regina’s eyebrow is raised and her fingers grip her half empty glass harder.

“Oh, you know,” Which great. Now she has to go through the mortifying explanation. “His theory. How he thinks that the full moon does something to people in town. It’s how he found me, actually. ” 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Regina's lips become a thin line

“Someone placed an ad in one of those paranormal magazines...you know what? It’s none of my business. He’s your kid. And I really should be heading back.” 

“Of course.” Regina holds in her sigh of relief, she can tell. And that makes Emma wonder...but she can’t. It’s ridiculous to think what she’s thinking. 

The house does smell a little like Christmas, Emma thinks as she heads out. Apples and sugar. She takes a quick look as Regina leads her to the door, it’s an old house with new furniture. Sofas with clean edges on a wooden floor, art she doesn’t really get hanging off the walls. Like it’s trying to cover sore spots, she knows something about that. But then Emma remembers her place as a stranger and that she is heading out the door and out of Regina’s life. It’s not for her to linger like this. 

“Thank you again, Miss Swan.” She says holding the door open for her. 

“Uh..yeah. No problem.” Emma notices that the air seems to be losing its charge as she gets farther away from the door, which she hears close behind her. 

There’s nothing to think about, Emma tells herself once in the Bug. She rubs her hands together and blows hot air through them. She is not really looking forward to the three hour drive back to the city. Henry, she has to admit, is not bad company to have in a car even if he rambles a little too much about monsters and such. Emma looks to the passenger seat and spots one of those school notebooks. It’s what she can only assume to be kid’s journal and there is an eyeroll that should not be as fond as it is. 

“Sneaky bastard.” 

She puts the key in the ignition, her ass already complaining about the drive, and then nothing. Emma keeps pushing for it to start, actually begs it to start. Nothing and with a half a tank left. Her forehead goes straight to the steering wheel, because what a son of a bitch of a day. And of course she laughs because she cannot believe this is happening. 

  
  



	3. But Does the Bear Live in the Woods? Or The Dangers of Alcoholism

The room at Granny's looks like it hasn't been redone since the 40s, too much wood and the bedsheets are an ugly shade of pink. Not that it makes a difference when she throws herself on the bed and kicks off her boots. Finally, she can rest. Her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose when she remembers she had to walk back to Regina's door and ask to use her phone because her car wouldn't start. She had called the tow truck herself, an abuse of power for sure, and in ten minutes Emma had been out the door again. Tomorrow she’ll be gone. There really is no harm in leafing through Henry's journal, if she’ll be gone tomorrow. They’ll fix her car and she won't have to think about Storybrooke or Henry or Regina for that matter.

She sits up and cracks the thing open. No ten year old should have handwriting this neat, let alone a clear and color coded system of classification. Apparently he has been profiling people, a little creepy, but dedicated. Most have three question marks next to their name, his mother's are in red. Who, Emma notices, is at the center of big web. Henry is trying very hard to connect the dots, mostly trying to relate fallen trees to someone who spends a lot of time in the woods. That kind of thing. There are some not half bad drawings, magazines clippings and quotes he definitely copied from his library books. She finds his rules, or stages in the back cover.

  1. __Moon One: Change in mood__
  2. _Moon Two: Change in face_
  3. _Moon Three: Full Change_



That doesn't make things any clearer, and she wonders why she’d thought it would. It’s the writing of a boy with an active imagination. According to him, everyone should be in their second stage and short of them having a lizard face any other day, they seemed like pretty regular people. Some a little skittish maybe and Granny Lucas had certainly not been too happy dealing with her tonight. Maybe that creep at the gas station had been right, they just don't like strangers. And now that she gives it a little thought, they all seem pretty set on her leaving tomorrow. No, she’s just projecting on them. The are all perfectly ordinary people. Storybrooke is just a town the middle of nowhere and somewhere, between the woods and the sea. Henry Mills is a kid dealing with his issues as best as he can and Regina Mills is doing the very same thing. She puts Henry’s journal aside and pushes down her jeans. In twenty four hours everything will be in the past. This shouldn't be bothering her.

The knocking on her door is insistent, polite but insistent. Emma groans as the bright red numbers flashing 9:00 AM hurt her eyes. Stupid motel alarms never do go off on time. She was supposed to be up at seven to go check on the Bug and have breakfast. She runs her fingers through her hair and feels the stickiness in her eyes as she heads to the door and opens it.

“Miss Swan…” Regina says as she looks at her from head to toe. This is when Emma remembers that she’s standing in nothing but a tank top and her underwear. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

And really it's a little ridiculous because Regina is at her door perfectly dressed and wearing a perfume that's doing _things_ to her and holding a basket full of red apples. Maybe Emma should have a talk with Henry about his definition of cursed.

“Aaah no. You’re not. Alarm didn't go off on time is all. Can I help you with something?”

**“** My assistant tells me your car is still in the shop.”

“Well, it should be.” Emma sees Regina take some offense to that.

“I only meant to drop these off, dear.” She gestures to the basket and hands it over to Emma. “A thank you for getting Henry back to me.”

“Thanks.” She maybe has the dumbest or the most brilliant idea ever. Whatever it is, there is no stopping it now. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee downstairs.”

Emma supposes that not many people pose this type question to Regina Mills. Judging by the way she moistens her lips and tries to blink away the surprise. That practiced smile surfaces again, and she has the feeling that it fools many people here. Not her, Emma dares to think.

“Alright, I suppose.” Regina glances down at her legs and quirks her brow. “I suggest you get dressed first.”

It could be that it’s her dumbest idea to date. They're sitting in a booth without saying much and Emma is just watching the patrons looking their way. She knows Regina is mayor of this town but that cannot explain the amount of not-so discreet looks Emma sees directed at them. It doesn't help that the place has that same fifty year old look to it. Squeaking ceiling fans and an old jukebox to boot.

“What is it that you said you did for a living, Miss Swan?”

“Emma. And I didn’t.” At least she can take a sip of her coffee to cut through the awkwardness. “I’m a bail bondsperson.”

“That sounds...interesting.” There is a beat or two of her fingers on the table. “You mentioned Henry finding you through an ad?”

This is where she gets stuck. Telling the full truth would not only be fucking embarrassing but would it feel like betraying the kid’s trust even more. And she has no ready-made lie to give her. She’s going to have to bite the bullet on this.

“It’s just something he…”

“Swan, right?” Audrey’s, the mechanic, voice comes from behind Emma. “Mayor Mills, didn’t see you there. Sorry.”

“Good morning, Miss Ramírez.” There is a subtle change of tone there. While with Emma she had been stilted and a little thrown, her voice is stronger here. “Bringing news on Miss Swan’s car?” Emma can’t help rolling her eyes hearing that _Miss Swan_ again.

“Yeah, actually.” Audrey says, her voice too big for her tiny size and toothy smile. “It’s bad, dude. Sorry. Might take a week or more to fix.”

“What? Why?” Emma asks already doing all sorts of math.

“It’s over thirty years old. Needs a specialized part and I just don’t have those lying around, you know? Needs to be ordered from outta town. I’ll try to make do with what I have but can’t make any promises.”

“Oh.” Emma sinks into her seat, thinking that she should feel worse. “Guess there’s nothing else to do, but wait?”

“Like I said, week or more. Mayor Mills.” Audrey says and heads for the counter.

Regina is watching her again, eyes narrowed and her chin slightly raised.

“What?” Emma asks her because she senses that something is just brewing inside her.

“You don’t seem to be that bothered by the news.” And the way she speaks, which could really be considered an art, makes it sound insulting.

“I don’t see why I should sweat it if there’s nothing I can do.” And it’s not really the truth. Were it a different place or even a different day Emma would be frustrated out of her ass but her curiosity today trumps everything else. Weirdly enough.

“Of course.” Regina grips her mug tighter. “Why don’t you let me pay for your bus fare back to the city? I could have Miss Ramírez call you when your car is ready.”

Emma can do nothing but laugh and throw her back against her seat. “That seems a little too much, don’t you think?”

“My son brought you to this town, Miss Swan,” Regina’s eyes turn sharper along with her voice. “It’s the polite thing to do.”

“I could use a few days off, actually. You can rest easy.” Another half-lie but it can’t be helped. No matter how breath taking a face Regina Mills owns or how intense that gaze is.

“But a week or more. Surely, you do have a life to get back to.” Something inside her is being reined in, Emma can tell. Like a flare behind her eyes or a spark under her skin.

“Lady, I’ve never seen anyone so eager to get rid of me.” Emma says with a slight smile and the words sound heavier than she had intended.

“It’s not eagerness…”

“Do you gals need anything?” The waitress has perfect timing.

Emma takes a second to look at her, long brown straight hair with a red streak in it. Shorts with suspenders and a white t-shirt that barely reaches her belly button. The plaid shirt she’s wearing reaches below her shorts. There is a shine to her smile and Emma can’t help but return it.

“Got any bear claws...umm”

“Ruby. And sure, I got you.” Ruby winks at her and alright, maybe Emma swallows a little. “Madam Mayor, could I get you anything?”

“No, Miss Lucas. I’m fine.” Regina says curtly and not even bothering to look away from Emma. It’s enough to make Ruby leave without another word.

There is something off about the way she looks and it’s different from how she had looked last night. Last night Emma had seen her distraught, guarded and with a rehearsed politeness. Now there seems to be anger bubbling inside her, judging by the way her jaw tightens. All too sudden too, brought on by God knows what. Ruby? Emma wonders for a second if this what Henry meant by change of face. Crazy, she knows.

“Do you call everyone by their last names?” She drums her fingers on the table. What’s that line about not poking a bear?

“I am mayor of this town, Miss Swan. I could hardly get casual with my constituents, now could I?” Regina bares enough teeth for a dangerous smile that hides a hiss. “Some of us learned manners from somewhere other than the street.”

Emma is sure that if she had looked closer, or if Regina had allowed her to, there would have been some sort of explosion behind those dark eyes of hers. And well, it’s not her fault if that sets her off too. Because it’s been a long time since Emma’s let anyone speak to her like that.

“Just _what_ is your goddamn problem with me?!” Emma leans on the table and never looks away from Regina whose face has to keep from contorting into a snarl. It hadn’t been there minutes before.

“Forgive me for being wary of stranger who just waltzed into my town with _my son._ And who seems all too happy about staying.” Her voice is hushed but by no means measured.

“Just what do you think I want from you?” Emma says getting even closer to her, not that she can control her body at this moment. That electric charge is running all around her again.

“I don’t know what the hell you want from me. That’s the problem.” Something dark swirls in Regina’s eyes as she feels her flesh turn hot. “And you seem to be of questionable character…”

Ruby casually drops a plate with two bear claws but this time Emma doesn’t look up and she walks away without a word. Guess she can smell the goddamn thunder gathering around them.

“You think I’m trying to hustle you? You don’t even know the first thing about me.”

“Why don’t you enlighten me, then?”

“Oh, so now this is an interrogation.” Emma takes a sip from her coffee, trying to give her mouth something else to do.

“Need I remind you, this was your idea, dear.” Her face is hard, hard enough that it might break if touched.

“Didn’t know coffee was served to the third degree here, Madam Mayor.” Emma thinks she feels sparks at the tips of her fingers. Could just be Regina and the way she is getting under her skin.

“It is when people have dubious intentions.”

“You know what? Why don’t you have a talk with your son and ask him why he came to find me?” It’s out of her mouth before she knows it, like it was pulled out of place she hadn’t been in a long time.

“How dare you?! You’re _no one._ A drifter, at best.”

And that hits Emma hard, like that time she’d been punched in the stomach in fourth grade and couldn’t breathe for a good two minutes. She has to ask herself if this venom had been in her words last night, if she just had hidden it well. It hadn’t seem that way just hours ago. It doesn’t stop her from standing up and clenching her fists. Emma doesn’t even care if everyone in the diner is gawking at her like the thing from another planet.

“It’s been real great. Heard about Storybrooke’s hospitality,” Emma pulls out a crumbled five bucks from her pockets and lays it flat on the table and grabs the bear claws off the plate. “Now, if you would excuse me, I’m gonna go loiter around your damn town.”

“I’d watch it if I were you, Miss Swan.” Regina’s hands are clasped on the table and her back is straight. Eyes still fixed on her and red lips looking like a warning.

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be.”

It’s been a good couple of years since Emma has actually felt  her chest and nostrils expand like this. Just what the hell had that been? Her mind is going through all the steps, an impulse based on Regina's perfume, coffee and then _this._ She needs to walk until her feet ache inside her boots and she can stop thinking about Regina Mills. About that face that composed itself through tears last night and had turned so hard and sharp today. She needs to not think about Henry’s notes, the second full moon and how her heart's still beating with something that’s not entirely anger. What had she expected? She’d gotten too caught up with the scents of apple and sugar and a gaze she had probably misread . The smell of salt hits her as she heads nowhere, and it is doing nothing to keep those words from playing in an endless loop, _you’re no one_. It’s not like she hasn't heard them before, it’s not like her skin hasn't thickened over the years. But she bites the inside of her cheek and shoves her hand down her pockets anyway. It’s stupid and she has no idea where it had come from, but she had wanted Regina to like her. It’s just this whole damn thing, the town that looks like it never moved past swing dancing. Hell, it could even be the damn moon. Right. It’s not the moon.

In a blink she’s at a pier, leaning against a cold metal railing. Emma wouldn’t be able to retrace her steps back to Granny’s if she had to, she’d walked here in some sort of trance. It’s getting harder and harder to keep the word _curse_ away from her thoughts. Even if she knows, knows, that it’s not a curse and just her idiot mouth running. She’s not entirely blameless, she sees that now with the water under her. Emma hadn’t really stopped to consider how she came across to Regina, something had just gone off inside her and she could feel nothing more than that burst of fire. Hadn’t been able to see anything but red lips full of rejection and wariness. Would they sting her own lips? No. She can’t be feeling this. Not after the worst coffee in recorded history. Well,shit. She hadn’t felt so at war with herself in a long time. It’s not even noon and there are a lot things being pulled out of the do-not-open-under-any-circumstance boxes in her mind. If she believed in anything, Emma could think that maybe this meant something. Maybe her Wicca foster mother would have looked for damn signs, ask to read her palm or something like that. Or say that today is the harvest moon or whatever hippies said back when she was eight years old. But no, it’s just a bad morning. Nothing special about a crap start to a day. Well nothing besides Regina Mills. Her brain, the jerk, won’t let her forget that detail.

Not even hours later while she’s having a late lunch, chewing on flaccid fries, has Emma forgotten. Serves her right for having been defeated by a ten year old. At least now she’s sort of distracted, the fuzzy TV playing in the background at a bar.The Rabbit Hole, figures it’d be called that in a town with a name like Storybrooke. Not for the first time, she’s questioning her sanity and wonders if she’s not actually caught in some second rate story. When she thinks about it, it’s usually at night after a couple of beers and Emma wonders just how her story would unfold. It’s a mess as far as she remembers. Being abandoned by a roadside had been the most noteworthy thing about her. There'd been nothing special about Emma Swan after that. There still isn't, she supposes. The weirdoes and their ghouls and ghosts, Emma decides, do not count when measuring specialness. She could make for an unlikely hero, though. One of those lucky or unlucky ones plucked from a crowd and given a destiny they struggle to come to terms with. She shakes her head at the thought of that, the closest thing she’s gotten to that is Henry and his faith in her. That she can break the curse or any curse really. And maybe this is enough for her, for whatever reason. She won’t think of why right now.

“You all don’t get it!” Comes a severely pissed off voice from the back of the place and Emma is glad it snaps her away from her thoughts. “None of you!”

“Get what, Leroy?” Asks the bartender without bothering to look up from his calculator and notebook.

“The state of things! Have you stopped to look around?!” Leroy walks over to the bar.

He’s a short man with yellow bulging eyes. He has a scruff of a beard and wears a dark green coat that's too big for him. There’s a wool hat covering his head. It’s like he’s working hard to keep all of himself in.

“Cold War’s over, Leroy. Think you can relax?” He is still crunching numbers and sounds more bored than anything else.

“Do.Not. Tell. Me. To. Relax. Sonny boy. I still got a bullet in my ass from 'Nam! All those boys that came back wrong from the Gulf! The gas, the bombs! No one cares!”

He is close enough to Emma that she can smell that there isn't a whiff of alcohol in him. Not even when he grips the wood of the bar hard and glares at the other man.

“Leroy. Please, come on.” The bartender sighs. “Get some coffee or something. Shit, sleep it off on a park bench if that does it for you.”

“What the hell are you implying?”

“You’re a drunk, Leroy.”

“You’re a piece of work, you know, Jim?” Leroy has that voice that is just begging pick a fight.

“Out. Now.” Jim the bartender remains cool as ever.

Leroy turns over the bowl holding dirty bar nuts and walks away muttering and throwing his hands up in the air.

“Is he gonna be OK?” Emma asks Jim, noticing how his still remains collected as he sweeps the nuts off the bar.

“Yeah, yeah. Leroy just gets like that every once in awhile.”

“Under every full moon?”  Emma says and really she’d meant to laugh but hadn’t.  

“What was that?” Jim says, eyebrows raised and looking at her like she’s crazy.

“Nothing. Just worried about the guy.” She says casually. “Got an uncle with a drinking problem.”

“He’ll be fine. Stumbling around the streets tomorrow. Sheriff will throw him in the drunk tank for a day then he’ll be as good as new.” Jim is more interested in the soap scum of his glass than he is in Emma.

“Yeah.” She breathes out.

On a hunch she sets cash on the table and walks out. Because Leroy isn’t a drunk. Emma knows drunks, words slurring together, clumsy steps and the _smell._ The only thing that could pass him off as one is that outburst, that unprovoked string of argument that just wanted to evolve into something violent. It’s not as if she hadn’t had one of those this morning, she thinks with guilt settling into her stomach. That’s how she knows Jim is wrong about Leroy and Emma needs to know just how wrong. Not that she’s trying prove anything or disprove it. Nothing about the moon and a curse, that’s for sure. It’s whatever curiosity had bitten her this morning. Or that feeling between guilt and something else she’d first gotten with Henry in the Bug. She can’t just leave, that much is clear. Just how did this happen?

Emma carefully follows Leroy across town, watching him like she would a mark. It feels wrong, for the first time in a long time. He hasn’t done anything other than to cause a scene in an empty bar in the afternoon. What’s funny, she notices after the few blocks, is not Leroy in himself. Sure, he looks like he’s about to burst, boiling in those clothes of his and angry muttering but the people he encounters are _off_. They look like commuters on a midnight train, each contained in their own little bubble. Each too busy with their own bullshit to even spare a glance, much like Jim back at the bar. Emma would have expected it from city people, too tired to feel anything but that. But not small town people, not with bright colors and where everyone knows their neighbors. However out of place this is,  it’s very much human. Normal not paranormal. People can be assholes, that’s the first rule in any unofficial rulebook on people. They see what to they want to see.

Leroy’s too caught up in his whatever that he hasn’t noticed Emma following him, not on these small streets where there’s hardly anywhere to hide. He grunts whenever he picks up the pace and shakes his arms like he’s trying to get rid of something. And still no bottle and no cans. Nothing incriminating. Maybe he has a hidden flask somewhere. He could have had a whole bottle of vodka for lunch. Vodka doesn’t even smell of potato. A drunk trying to keep that hidden would have thought of all of that. She thinks this even if she feels in her gut Leroy isn't just a drunk.These are arguments that are floating around in her mind and she is desperate to pick one. One that makes sense and doesn’t involve curses because that’s irrational, and not like her at all. Still, Emma cannot believe a fourth grader’s journal has her chasing a poor man who very obviously has a real problem. This is ridiculous. She can’t stop.

They’re at a park now, and she thinks maybe he’ll really sleep it off on a park bench. This will be the end of the chase, Emma wants to believe.

“Hey, wait up!” She hears Henry’s voice behind her followed by the sound of bike wheels speeding up behind her.

Emma stops and is too relieved to find that Leroy hasn’t even bothered to look back, even if he is a good half block away.

“You didn’t leave!” He’s pedalling off his seat now.

“Car trouble, kid.” She offers him a half-shrug and a half-laugh.

“Still, if you wanted to you could’ve left. There _are_ buses, Emma.”

“You got me there.” Emma remembers red lips and _my son and_ there is a knot in her stomach. “I don’t think your mom would like it if you she knew you were hanging around me.”

“She won’t find out. Too busy.” He pushes his eyebrows together, as if he’s considering something.

Funny, she thinks. Regina hadn’t seemed busy this morning, but that’s all it is. Funny.

“That’s what she says anyway. Tonight’s the last moon, mom tries to stay away from me when they happen.” Henry is trying to have that cool detachment, the way his mother does. Hide behind a mask, but it isn’t working.

“And that’s good or..?” She can’t help asking because overnight Emma has managed to care. And it’s scary how it doesn't puzzle her too much.

“Bad? Yeah. I wish she wouldn’t.” His voice doesn’t crack, like he’s glad to finally say the words.  “Heard about this morning at Granny’s.”

“Jesus, this really is a small town.” Emma shakes her head and sees that Leroy is still good distance away from them.

“ You’re news, Emma.”

“So I’ve figured.” Emma says slowing down just enough that he gets off his bike and walks it next to her.

“That’s not really her.” Henry says apologetically. “I mean, it is but it isn’t it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just the moon. I told you, it gets harder for her.”

Emma feels, for the second time today, that the air has been knocked out of her. Because Henry is looking at her as she says this, eyes wide trying to get her to see. And as much as she cares, as much as her chest swells for this kid and his mother, she still can’t give him what he wants.

“Kid, we all have our bad days. Sometimes you just have to let them flow.” It’s the best she can manage.

Henry’s eyes are narrow looking at her. “It’s not about having a bad day. Not really. Even if today must really be sucking for her.”

“I thought you said your mom cast the curse.” Emma says as gently as she can because she can just feel that he needs this.

“Yeah. Doesn’t mean she isn’t cursed.” He tells her pointedly, like he thinks everything he had said last night hadn't mattered. Like she hadn’t been listening.

“OK. So...what are you planning to do about it?” She tries a cautious smile and a lighter voice.

“The first part of my plan was to get you here…”

“You can check that off your list.” She kicks a pebble towards him and he kicks it back. “You didn’t have anything to do with my car crapping out on me, did you?”

“That was just luck.”

“What’s the second part of the plan, then?”

“Figure out how to break the curse. That’s where you come in. Or I mean you would...if you believed in any of it.” There’s that thing that is so decidedly his mother’s in his voice. Things Emma shouldn’t be noticing but does anyway.

“And how would I do that?” She thinks it’s better to keep him talking and ignore his little accusation.

“To break any curse you need to know why it was cast in the first place.” He says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“And let me guess, we’re supposed to do this without your mom finding out?”

And at this he actually smiles what she guesses is his best shit-grin. “Yeah, like a secret operation! Operation Cobra!”

“Great name, kid.” Emma sighs with a sigh that doesn't manage to be exasperated. “This would involve a lot of sneaking around, stakeouts and walkie-talkies, right?”

“Wow, that’s spooky.” Henry looks at her with those eyes that are so shiny and new. “We should go out tonight! Do some investigating!”

“Ah nah, I don’t think so.” Emma tells him even as she eyes the still ranting and angry Leroy ahead of them.

“Come on! If you don’t see it tonight, it’ll be another a month! Pleaaaase?”

“If I say I’ll look into it will you promise to stay safe and indoors?” She puts her hands on her waist and makes sure to hold his eyes in hers. Won’t tell him, of course, that she is already after Leroy.

“I thought you don’t believe in this stuff?” His left eyebrow is raised and she can’t remember ever meeting a smart-ass so young.

“You’re TEN. You should be staying in, curse or no curse!” Emma says scrunching up her nose.“Promise me. Don’t need your mom coming after me.”

“OK, OK. I promise.” He actually snickers. “I wouldn’t drink or eat anything they gave me after sundown by the way.”

“No one’s gonna drug me, kid.”

“Aha. Just looking out for you, Emma.”

Despite rejecting the idea that someone might slip her a roofie and still trying to think something other than a curse, Emma only buys sealed food for dinner. The kind that’s secretly all plastic and probably chemicals. Generic soda with enough sugar and caffeine to carry her through the rest of this absurd mission she’s on. Her mind wanders as Leroy takes her away from the center of town, away from the lights and people. She thinks of Regina, again. Or at least stops pretending she hadn’t been doing that for the whole day. Remembers that Henry had said that this wasn’t about having a bad day, and that it hadn’t been the real her snarling at the diner. Not really, anyway. And she thinks it makes a weird kind of sense, or maybe that’s what she wants to think. She’d seen it, after all. Hardness that hadn’t been there the night before. But then again, Emma could just be trying to convince herself that she still has a shot. Somehow, someway. That she hadn’t made a mess of things over morning coffee. That maybe she could tell her the whole truth. Get Henry talking to her about this, not exactly Operation Cobra but it’s something. Some good could come out of this weird paranormal nonsense, for once. She sucks in a breath as Leroy heads into the dark.

The moon is so bright and yellow now, it almost looks fake. It’s making the woods light up, it’s all deep greens and blues. She has to shake herself once every few minutes, she misses the Emma of twenty-four hours ago. Lying in a bed with ugly sheets and believing that this was all insane. She misses the Emma who actively snorted at crap like this. Well, it’s too damn late now. Now that she is standing by a rotting log with nothing but her leather jacket wrapped around herself and a bottled soda to keep her company late at night. This is completely ridiculous, even by her standards. What exactly does she expect to happen? Emma could potentially just be stalking a man who will wake up with the world’s worst migraine tomorrow. No “full change” to speak of, no curse. Nothing crazy. And yet, her gut had brought her this far. She sighs because what else can she do?

There he is, Leroy in a clearing, shaking his head like he’s trying to get rid of noise inside it. He’s pacing and fuming. It’s just as she suspected, he isn’t what he seems. Which makes this whole thing less crazy and more frightening. Still, she keeps watching him with an emptiness in her stomach and a chill down her spine. Her mind begs her to stay rational, this is just like the times she had stood by a grave on a fog covered night because a girl with glasses bigger than her face had promised sixty bucks and she’d been short on money that week. The wind will blow, hell it could it even fucking howl and nothing will change. Wrong, wrong, that’s what her gut tells her and she has never hated it more.

He removes the wool hat hat he’d been wearing and throws it aside, and he’s getting more furious by the second. He’s grunting and his breaths are shallow and uneven, like he’s been holding in a whole lifetime's worth of anger. Still, it could be nothing. Just a misunderstood man getting out of all his shit in the woods. Alone. Under a full moon. What was it that Henry’s note said he was or was he a question mark? She can’t remember. As if that’d help her make sense as to why he’s running in circles now. Emma dares to look away and check her watch, and sees both needles lined precisely at midnight. That has never meant anything before. It shouldn’t now but then she hears Leroy groan in pain. She raises her eyes on instinct, and thinks there must be something wrong with them. A red mist has covered the woods, it’s all around her and concentrating around Leroy. Even if her mind is screaming for a totally-ordinary-crap explanation it cannot find any. Red mist doesn’t just appear out of nowhere, _red mist doesn’t fucking exist to begin with._

There’s a loud thud and he’s on his knees, groans turn into loud grunts when he’s in all fours. Emma can’t stop watching, because this is most definitely a hallucination. She must have stepped on some shrooms and inhaled some powder. Because that man’s eyes cannot be widening and turning black as coal, his clothes aren’t being ripped apart and his skin isn’t breaking under the moonlight. There is no hair sprouting from that red broken skin and his mouth cannot be turning into a snout. With fangs. Breathe, Emma needs to breathe. Because this thing that’s not happening? It’s happening. Air is barely going into her lungs and her grip around the plastic of the bottle tightens as Leroy grows and grows in size, bones cracking and breaking. Legs stretching and fingernails becoming claws. He’s turned into a great a big black bear. Her mind is telling her to scream. Run. Just do something to get the hell away from this but it’s not faster than a flash from across where she is standing. And there it is again, another flash. It’s a camera. The kid. Henry. Of course he’s out here, breaking his promise. Her feet are moving before she knows it and lucky that the bear, _Leroy,_ is just barely starting to get riled up by the light.

“KID! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! RUN, RUN!” She shouts as she gets closer to the bear.

“Emma!” He says not nearly scared enough.

But then of course the bear gets on two feet and stands tall over him. Like the world’s scariest shadow. Now Henry’s backing away and the bear is baring its teeth and is not too thrilled by the kid. With its gigantic paw it tries to scratch at him and Henry screams in pain. And fuck, this is a mess about to turn into a tragedy.This is not happening, this cannot happen.  She does the only thing she can do armed with a half-full bottle of soda, she aims and throws it at the bear’s head. That does it, it turns around and roars at her. Death by were-bear, that is not how she had expected to go. She vaguely remembers something about not being able to outrun a bear, or running in zig zag to avoid its jaws. Whatever, she is practically sprinting with her heart in her throat and running towards Henry.

He is ahead of her, camera still in hand and tripping over a rock on the ground. Emma grabs his arm and he winces in pain and pulls him along with her. She is not looking back to check if the bear is still after them, even if she can hear its four paws somewhere close. Twigs are breaking all over the place, a branch hits her in the face and cuts her cheek. Dirt turns into peebles under their feet and she realizes they’re along the coast now, away from the woods.  The crunch somehow tells her they’re safe because she can’t hear the bear anymore. No roars, no grunts. It could have given up or maybe couldn’t come out of the woods. The why doesn’t matter, not really. Not when she saw what she just saw. Barely standing she takes a look at Henry’s arm, there’s a long and bloody scratch on it. Not quite a gash, but still ugly. Emma sucks in a breath and tries to shake away the water in her eyes, and steady her hands.

“Jesus fucking Christ. Shit.” She blurts out. Henry looks at her wide-eyed as if swearing had been the most unbelievable part about tonight. “Sorry.”

“See?” He asks quietly. “Do you believe me now?”

“OK. OK.” Emma says weak in the knees. “I believe. I believe.”

* * *

Hospitals and cursed towns don’t really mix, Emma learns. There’s a lot she’s learning all in one big hit. She goes back, replaying every moment in which her world had not just been turned upside down but downright shattered. Maybe she’s still covered in that red mist that turned Leroy into a bear. Nothing makes any goddamn sense, like having to wait until the crack of dawn to get Henry to the Storybrooke hospital to get stitches because who knows what kind of monsters, _monsters_ , the staff turns into.The doctor, some blonde and pasty one, hadn’t seemed to be too bothered by the whys and the hows of them, his eyes had been sunken and he hadn't been all there. “It’s the curse.” Henry had mouthed and she had just nodded with her arms crossed and ears ringing with too many words. It’s not until Henry is getting his last stitch, black thread on torn skin, that Regina shows up, frantic and glassy eyed again.

“Henry!” She says out of breath followed by a string of Spanish Emma barely understands. Regina checks the whole of him, looking for more injuries and then shifts her eyes to Emma.

“You! I should have you arrested! Endangering a child!” The words are harsh but gone is that hardness of yesterday, her face moves fluidly with her mouth. No matter how drained she looks, Regina’s fighting hard to stay afloat. Trying hard to keep anger working for her.

“Mom, no. Please, it wasn’t her fault! Emma saved me!” He says tugging at the sleeve of the blazer she had very obviously thrown on herself before rushing out.

“Saved you from what?” And just like that her tone turns softer but there is that undercurrent of absolute fucking exhaustion in her voice.

“A bear.” He replies avoiding her gaze, eyes telling Emma he is busy coming up with a likely story.

“A bear?! How on Earth?...Henry!”

“Some kids at school said they’d seen one in the woods and I guess I wanted it to see it for myself..and...I left before sunrise...”

Guilt flashes through Regina’s face and yesterday Emma would have thought it something different, completely unrelated to a curse and a full moon. But she knows that she is struggling to come up with a reply, trying to measure her reaction because she cannot admit to being gone. She has to pretend as if everything is normal, as if she had slept through the kid going out the window There is a stab of sadness at Emma’s side, because they are all hiding their truths. Like they hadn’t lived them last night.

“I was out for an early morning walk when I saw him. No big deal, really.” Emma cuts in shrugging her shoulders because this has to be the understatement of the century. Because she can’t shake off everything that’s going through her mind a thousand miles an hour.

Regina goes speechless for a second, eyes trying to bury whatever she’s feeling now. Not that it’s particularly working, when they’re soft the way they are. Not when it looks like she could collapse into herself.

“I..ah..thank you, Miss Swan.” She throws her hair back, no matter how short it is. And there it is again, that worried look, worried about what a stranger might see. A boy who keeps running away from his mother.

“Uuh, no problem.” Emma rubs at the back of her neck. She’s dealt with so many thank yous over the years, but they had never meant this much to her. Hell, they had never meant anything at all. “Anyway, I should go. Since..um..you’re here now. No more sneaking out, kid.” It’s awkward, and she is still thinking about red mist, a man turning into a bear and Henry with a flashing Polaroid camera.

The coolness of the early autumn morning hits her face as she steps out of the hospital, away from the stench of medicine and alcohol. Emma sucks in a breath to steady herself. She’s barely keeping it together, she knows that. Being away from Henry makes it easier to let her body feel that chill in her spine and the absolute what the fuck of her situation.

“Miss Swan, wait.” Regina says behind her, pulling her blazer closed.

Any other day, Emma figures, she would have looked so strong and big in it. All sharp edges and straight lines, that’s the kind of thing it looks like. But not today, not when she’s looking so different from yesterday morning. Sipping from a mug at Granny’s she had looked like a raging fire, but now she looks like an extinguished flame.

“Yeah?” Emma notices that Regina's hands also have a slight shake to do them. And wonders what is it that she sees or becomes under the moon. She knows what it’s like to stretch and stretch to hide your pain. Not like this, but she can feel it like an old wound. It’s not something she’s allowed to say.

“I wanted to apologize.” Regina says keeping the pieces inside her throat unbroken.

“You don’t have to...I know how this may look to you.” She admits, wanting it to be a crutch for Regina. “Me, and the kid, I mean. I swear...it’s just random coincidences. I don’t mean anything by them.”

“I know how he can get. He’d climb the tallest tree if it meant he could get a clearer view of the world.” She smiles weakly. “You’ve only gotten caught in all this.”

“I don’t mind. That much.” Emma manages to give her a half-smile even if her insides are shaking.

“You should come for dinner, tonight,” It’s not nearly a firm a sentence as she wants it to be. “Henry insisted.”

Emma knows she should turn it down, make up an excuse. Any excuse, because there’s that thing in the back of her mind that reminds her how much she’s managed to care. How much she cannot afford to keep doing it. But then Henry’s words return to her, and she sees them in Regina’s face. Trying hard to hide that she is worse than miserable.

“Sure. I’d like that.” Those words feels so big, bigger than any she has ever spoken, when they leave her mouth. Dammit.

* * *

 

The logical thing, the thing a person might do after a sleepless night, is get into bed. Have the sheets scratch her nose and pass out. But Emma knows she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, even if her eyes sting and her legs wobble as she walks the streets of Storybrooke. She’s surprised she can even breathe at this point. She’s alive,wondering if she’s lost it, but alive. There’d been that thump, thump of her heart, then the way Henry looked at her all through the hours they sat together, her trying to keep from hurling and him with the open skin. Then of course, there’d been the cold air in the morning and Regina. Regina, whose face had changed again and had asked her to dinner. Tonight. She must suspect Emma knows something. Isn’t that why she wanted her to leave so badly? Because of what she might see once the moon was out? Except tonight is not dangerous, nothing to see or run away from.  It’s dinner, just dinner. Still, Emma will have to pretend that she is actually the Emma of days earlier. A stranger who knows nothing and would soon leave their lives.There better not be a slip of her tongue as she cuts into her food tonight. Words like curse, were-bear, and holy shit should be erased from her brain. Will also need to keep eyes away from Regina, for every reason she think of. That’s going to be the hardest part.

She sighs and keeps her hands inside her pockets as she walks in clothes that probably have a smell to them now. Ha, she should probably do something about that. Considering well...everything. Perfume, apples, sugar. Her brain is pure mush, it feels like it’s pure mush and can’t think of much else other then curses, dinner, dark haired mayors, bears, _goddamn bears._ Emma's so tired and there’s nothing she can do but stay on her feet. Hope she doesn’t fall over, pray that something keeps her standing.

“You know how this goes, Leroy. Come on.” Her ears perk up at the mention of Leroy and she looks up to see a man grabbing his elbow.

“Don’t touch me, boy scout.” He grunts as he shakes him off.

“It’s Sheriff, actually.” He says like he’s only dealing with an impatient toddler. “Won’t touch you if you come nicely.”

“Alright, alright. Just get this over with.”

He’s going to get thrown into the drunk tank. For no reason other than he seems off. Emma remembers his bones breaking and the way his skin just fucking tore itself apart. She feels sick, and suddenly wants to stop this. Stop the Sheriff from taking him away. Because it isn’t fair, because she knows what it’s like to just be taken. No questions asked. Too many things are being unpacked from those unmentionable boxes in her mind and Emma acts before she can understand. Before she can stop herself from doing something stupid. It should worry her that it’s happening more and more the longer she stays here. She picks up her pace and follows them into the station. It’s small, there isn’t even a secretary. Just a cell, a couple of desks, some file cabinets and what she assumes is an interrogation room. Figures it’d be like this in a cursed town, like the Sheriff’s department could actually do anything around these parts. No petty theft or anything remotely normal happens here.

“Hey! You can’t do that!” Emma blurts as she stands by the door. She’s overstepping her bounds but at this point it’s not like it matters.

“Do what, miss?” He turns to look at her as he opens the cell for Leroy to get tin.

“You gotta be a drunk to get thrown in there. And well, uuuh..he isn’t.” She hadn’t planned what she would do or say, but anything would have been better than what she just said.

“Listen, sister. I don’t know you, but I don’t need your help,” Leroy tells her leaning against the bars. And Emma is reminded to be relieved, that he doesn’t remember her attacking his bear-self with soda bottle and running the hell away from him. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Don’t mind him. Just a grump with a hangover.” The Sheriff locks the cell and moves to stand closer to her.

“He _isn’t_.” Emma repeats as she feels a headache coming in. Great. Just what she needed.

“And why do you care so much?”

Her brain can’t come up with a believable answer, so instead she shrugs her shoulders.

“Just a concerned citizen?” He asks looking her over, as if considering her for a second or two.

“Something like that.” Her hands go to her waist and she can feel her brow furrowing.

“Didn’t catch your name.” It’s obvious he’s the kind of guy everyone loves. Clean shaven face and general easy going-ness. Typical Sears catalog type of guy.

“Emma. Swan.” It sounds rude but she can’t exactly be bothered by it. At this point her body is only reacting to the mess that’s swirling  around in her head.

“Ah, Audrey’s working on your car.” He looks at her with strange familiarity. “You saved the mayor’s son this morning.”

“Is there something you people don’t know about me?” She lets out a heavy breath and feels her neck tensing up.

“Ha. We don’t get many out-of-towners. To be honest, we could use a few more like you,” And for a solid second Emma thinks it might just be the worst pick up line she’s ever been hit with. “There’s a deputy position open. Old sheriff retired and I got promoted last week.”

“Aah..I..um.” Emma is thrown by the offer, given just like that.”I’m just here until my car gets fixed.”

“Couldn’t hurt to ask. Name’s David.” He extends his hand and she hesitantly shakes it.

“Well, umm thanks David.” She looks back at Leroy one last time and sees him with his eyes closed and mouth open against the cell bars. “I think I’ll get going now. He seems OK and all. Sorry about that.”

“It’s alright. Let me know if you change your mind.” He says with a smile too warm to be directed at a stranger. “Got a feeling about you.”

Emma shakes her head and lets out a laugh because God, she is so tired and even the small and ordinary things in this town seem so strange and big.  



	4. The Wolf That Never Brought Down Any Houses Or The Dangers of Skirts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter deals with sexuality and homophobia. While there are no slurs or direct attacks, it is present in the chapter.

She’s looking down at her cup of coffee. The milk swirling around in the black of the mug, it has too much sugar just like she likes it. She’s back at Granny’s, figured she’d eat something before forcing herself to sleep during the day. Her brain is doing that thing it does when it’s beaten to a pulp, it laughs at her and tells her that maybe she’ll turn into a vampire next. A bad match for personality, she thinks. She’d probably choke on garlic bread. It’s not funny. Well, it’s a little funny.  She must look deranged to anyone who is watching her closely. There’s men murmuring around her and she realizes that no one is watching her, or sparing a glance at her.  One of them, small and with the worst facial hair of the decade, is asking the others to look straight ahead of them. Emma does too, wanting to know what’s causing all the fuss. It’s Ruby, just Ruby. But the more she moves, the louder the men get. Emma wants to punch them all.

“Who do you think it was this time?” One says, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and eyes fixed on her.

“Hmph. Bert says he gave it to her well and good last month. But you know what they say, she does no repeats.” This one has ketchup smeared on his chin.

“Bert’s a fucking liar, Charlie.” He scoffs. “Saw her crawling around that trailer up by Widow’s Peak this morning.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

Emma is gripping her spoon tightly and wondering if she is still strong enough to stab them with it. If it worked it’d be worth it.

“So only one person lives there, moron. That Gale girl and her yippy little dog. Saw this one,” He points his chin towards Ruby, who seems to be unaware of this whole gross thing. “Getting back into her clothes.”

“She’s a..?” That one with the shitty beard gets chocked on the word and takes a mouthful of eggs. And Emma is having trouble breathing and she thinks there is red all around her again. It's just the yellow of the morning Sun peering through the diner’s windows. Her chest is too small for the ugly growing inside her.

“I’m just saying, Bert’s a fucking liar.” The man raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, as if he had just laid down the law of the goddamn universe.

“Sheesh, you ask me garbage like that belongs working a street corner in the city. Not serving my food.”

Emma is about to speak, to say _listen here dickhead_ and maybe actually manage to get herself arrested by her own damn hand when she catches sight of Ruby. And just for a second, she sees that her eyes are wet and that her jaw tightens as she buttons up the flannel that had been open til now. She knows, she’s been listening this whole time.

“Hey Ruby, can I get a slice of pie?” Emma asks her loud enough so that the three pigs can shut the hell up.

She gives her a nod. Ruby doesn’t ask which pie, she knows it  doesn’t really matter. As she gets closer Emma notices her wrinkled clothes,  the sames ones she was wearing yesterday. Her hair is tied into a messy braid and her eyeliner is smudged at the corners.

“Here you go.” Ruby slides the pie carefully and Emma almost wants to hold her hand because she looks like she might fly away. Instead she gives her the most grateful smile her lips allow. And it’s the whipped cream she adds on top that assures her Ruby gets it.  

“Thanks.”

The weakness of her smile has her asking herself just what the moon does to her. If it can be any worse than the gaze of those three at the counter. She won’t forget, she can’t. Not when Ruby looks like she’s barely getting through the morning, like she can’t really place her suffering. As if she doesn’t really understand herself. And Emma feels another stab sadness, and thinks it can’t stay like this. Because this pain? This pain is hers too.

It’s what she’s still thinking when she draws the curtains of her room closed and gets into bed, her body screaming finally, finally. But her brain won’t shut up about smudged eyeliner, and weak smiles. Regina’s and Ruby’s get mixed up when she closes her eyes. Blazers and flannels are pulled closed, glassy eyes and shadows of last night written all over faces that had looked so different yesterday morning. No, no. Things can’t remain the same, she can’t just ignore this. Not like she would some guy with an Iron Maiden tee and a walkman on his waist talking about an apparition in his dorm. This matters and it’s terrifying. Emma thinks of dinner, of red lips and Henry with black thread running through his arm. She thinks of a place at a table, of how she’s never had one. Her eyes begin to close, her mind finally catching the drift her body has been in and Emma’s not any less scared.

* * *

 

She hopes this is enough is her one obsessive thought. The stupid alarm clock had malfunctioned again but had at least woken her up at a time when stores would still be open. Emma had managed to shop in the afternoon, enough to keep her up to clean human standards. Now she isn’t too sure about the shirt she’d picked out. Black, almost see through. The cool of the evening pierces through the what feels like paper thin fabric and she quickly zips up her jacket. There’s a not so cheap bottle of wine in her hand, that will probably not be good enough, but bought anyway because that’s what she’s seen people do. Glancing down at her feet she realizes that in her dirty jeans and black boots she will look exactly the same to Regina. Great. Emma doesn't want to worry about that, not when there are bigger things all around her. Things that have somehow become hers to carry. She has secrets that don’t belong to her now and that hidden growing thing in her chest that does belong to her. That thing that feels a lot like longing.

It’s still there when she rings Regina’s doorbell, stronger than it had been on the walk here. Emma looks up at the moon and sees a shadow over it, and that wouldn’t have meant anything days ago. But now it means dinner and dark brown eyes. For a second she wonders if it’s not too late to turn back. The thought dies as the door opens and the warmth of the house wraps itself around her. Words get caught in her throat and she feels her teeth biting down on her lip.

“I’m glad you could make it, Miss Swan.” Regina says with a tone that toes the line between warm and polite.

“Yeah.” Maybe her smile shouldn’t be so wide. “Umm..course.” It should be obvious to Regina that this isn’t something she does. At all.

Regina open the door wider to let her in and she has to pick up on the tiny details that are making her up tonight. The ones that were there this morning, the ones that were there yesterday and the ones special for tonight. Her lips are painted a darker shade of red, almost brown. She’s sure there’s a specific name for the shade but her brain is failing her. Regina moves like she’s been taught how to turn absolute wear into grace.It makes her want to take a breath to steady herself. Because it’s still there, the act of hiding behind a carefully balanced smile, eyes that say not enough sleep and but too much guilt. Regina takes her jacket and Emma has to hope her face isn’t flushed as she eyes the definite see-through shirt that may be entirely inappropriate for dinner with a mother and son.

“I..um, brought wine,” Emma holds up the bottle as Regina leads her past the foyer. “I don’t know if it’s any good.”

“Storybrooke is somewhat lacking. It makes no difference what you bought.” It’s _not_ an insult Emma realizes and there’s something almost playful in her voice. Measured as it is.

“Isn’t the mayor supposed to endorse all things local?” She decides to dare, she’s already inside after all.

“No wine is local, Miss Swan. Storybrooke is a fishing town, if it’s escaped your notice.” Regina is standing just a little taller in her clothes, seems to fit in the clean edges of them well and blend in with the dark greys and whites of her dress pants and blouse. It’s Sunday night, for God’s sake. No one should look like an off-runway model on Sunday night. Especially after having cooked dinner.

“The loitering got in the way.” It’s a stupid thing to say, she’s an idiot pushing her luck. Not knowing what the hell she’s doing here.

But Regina only raises an eyebrow as they reach an old dining room that’s far too big for two people but still manages to feel suffocating. “I thought bailbonds people were supposed to be observant.”

“We are.” And Emma manages to stop herself before her mouth catches up with her gaze in being too heavy handed.

“So much so that the glaringly obvious just goes by unnoticed sometimes?” There is less of stretch to her words and expression now, like she’s forgotten herself for a precious few seconds.

“Exactly.”There’s that mental slap when she realizes the way it’d come out, _too much._ This dinner isn’t supposed to be about this. But really, what is it even about? A thank you for saving her son’s life? Emma’s never had the delicacy for this type of thing.

There’s about to be a reply when Henry burst through the swinging door.

“Emma!” He says obviously unaware of the way her blood is rushing right now. “You came!”

“Hey, kid. How’s the arm?” Her eyes travels from him to Regina, watching her words and the way she even moves around him.

“It’s good, look!” He holds it up like it’s a badge of honor. For Henry it probably is. It’s a little purple around the stitches.

“That’s...gnarly.” Emma laughs to keep from ruffling his hair.

Regina breathes out in mock in exasperation, part of that complicated act she's got going on. Somehow Emma can see through it, knows the look of someone who is relieved that what she loves most in this world is seen as such. She’s never seen it directed at her, she’s never been that for anyone but she can recognize it by the old ache at the pit of her stomach.

That’s the way dinner goes, Emma too aware of the things she isn’t supposed to be noticing. Not when she’s sitting across from Henry and next to Regina. Emma shouldn’t be picking up on the the way the yellow light flickers in Regina’s tired eyes, the way some words come more easily than others. How her voice turns softer when she calls Henry hijo and her lips press together after taking a sip of the wine she’d bought. She especially shouldn’t be aware of that emotional juggling she keeps up when talking to Emma, of how the expressions don’t necessarily match her voice. And it’s obvious to her now that the fight doesn’t begin when the moon is full, Regina is always keeping something tempered just under her skin.

Her hand accidentally brushes against hers as she takes a bowl of from Regina and Emma feels it. Right under her own skin,there’s no mistaking it. The electricity from before and she clears her throat and avoids Regina’s eyes as she shoves potatoes into her mouth. She didn’t know it was possible until tonight to have a chill running down her spine and have her face be fucking boiling. But then again, she didn’t think a hell of a lot things were possible. It’s taking a lot of her to keep her cool, because that spark can no longer be dismissed as a trick. Not when a red mist turns a man into a bear, not when curses are real. Emma has to accept the possibility that something is at work here and that she doesn’t understand. It’s a lot to mull over potatoes.

“Is everything alright?” Regina asks her and Emma needs to understand how is it she feels that Regina already knows the answer to that question. That she’ll lie too.

“Yeah,” She smiles still without looking at her, instead focusing on Henry who just looks confused. “Just the wine. You’re right. It really is bad.”

With cream smeared lips Henry is sent to wash up and clear off the table while Emma accepts another drink from Regina. She shouldn’t, it’s dangerous territory. Thin fucking ice. There’s the place at a table, the wine and that electricity moving around in her mind. How none of this is hers to have, to think otherwise is just plain delusional. Crazy. The only logical thing to do is to down her drink when Regina happens to be looking away because she cannot let herself want.

“In a hurry, Miss Swan?” Regina asks moistening her lips in a way that makes Emma swallow too loud to be unnoticed.

“Emma. I’m not one of your constituents,”  She deflects with a smile.  “And hardly a stranger anymore.”

“Maybe not.” Regina half agrees, clearly wanting to prod. “But maybe you’ll fill in the blanks for us.”

Emma holds her breath realizing that they’ve already had a version of this conversation before, ugly and explosive.

“Some other time, perhaps.” Regina says leading her back to the front door. Emma can breathe. For now.

There’s another spark as she hands her jacket back and Regina’s fingertips linger on the back of her hand for a half second that they both know is too long. It’s a test, proof that it’s not a coincidence. This time, Emma looks up at Regina and thinks that time has probably stopped. And knows, knows that she had felt it too. Wonders what this is to her, if she has any idea of what’s going on between the tips of her fingers and Emma’s skin. What it means, what would happen if it lasted more than a second. This is what people are talking about when they mean they’ve had an _experience_. To feel like you can’t move because you’re witnessing something you have no words for. Except those words do exist and are swimming around in her mind, they happen to be Regina Mills.

“Some other time.”Emma echoes, stupidly and entirely too late because time has unfrozen and sped up.

“Good night, Emma.” Her eyes are weary just as her smile tries to keep in all the things that touch had revealed.

“Night, Regina.”

The door closes behind her and Emma knows she isn’t leaving once the Bug is fixed. Not with the whole of Regina and the way her own body seems to be shaking right now. Not with that far-off look Ruby had to her this morning, not with Henry’s stitches still healing. She’s staying, she’s staying. Fuck.

* * *

 

There’s a badge on her belt now and Emma thinks this is some sort of joke. She’d run away from cops plenty of times and still remembers how cold the metal of handcuffs can feel around wrists. It’s what makes her perfect for the job, David tells her over and over again. As if being a deputy in Storybrooke requires anything other than paperwork and the occasional drive by through the non-existent bad parts of town. The ones without the fairy-lights, he means. The work she has to do has nothing to do with her new title, but she won’t tell David who has this blinding labrador smile. She has to wonder if he knows anything, if the moon does something to him because he seems to have nothing to hide under his skin. What you see is what you get, happy go lucky. The moon couldn’t do much to someone like David. Mary Margaret, his girlfriend, has that same quality to her. With cheeks that are almost pink and that not so quiet sigh and broad grin that escape her whenever she looks at David. Emma finds herself scratching her head most days when she thinks of a curse, how it makes any sort of sense or what it even is. How she can feel it in the air sometimes, see it in Ruby’s wolfish grin and sad eyes, hear it so easily in the way Regina clears her throat before speaking to her and saying _Deputy Swan_.

Emma has to pretend like her pulse doesn’t quicken, like the hair on the back of her neck doesn’t stick up whenever she’s near her. It’s been a total of ten times. Not that she’s counting. Regina seems to be her personal plasma globe, and she’s always caught watching that lighting in a bottle. Those are the moments when Emma remembers that everything she thought impossible is actually possible. And that Regina Mills is very real, something she would have questioned outside this new world of hers, just across the covered bridge. It definitely doesn’t help that David keeps sending her to deal with the mayor. She’s going to develop a goddamn heart condition at this rate.

“I swear she has a soft spot for you.” David tells her over beers at the Rabbit Hole. He talks like they’ve known each other for years and not ten days.

“She tolerates me, David,” Emma takes a swig of her beer and lies through her teeth. “I saved her kid, maybe that’s it.”

“Could be.” He laughs lightly and she can tell this isn’t just drinks after work. This is a get-to-know-you talk and she isn’t ready for it. “You got all your stuff back from the city?”

“Mhmm. Didn’t have a lot to begin with.” It’s true, everything she had left back in Boston had been neatly packed into three boxes. It’d taken her ten minutes to settle into the loft she’s sharing with Mary Margaret, who’d given her a look with a hand on her heart.

“That’s good for a move, I guess. Didn’t have anyone to say goodbye to?” And he means well, really. It’s obvious from the way his ears move as he talks. Like there’s genuine concern here, like he’s about to say he’s glad she’s here now.

“Ah no. I moved around a lot,” Emma doesn’t miss how she’s speaking like that’s a thing of the past. Something that belongs to the old Emma. “Never really got around to knowing anyone long enough.”

“No boyfriend then?”

She would have been able to stop herself from laughing  if she didn’t have three beers in her and David had been someone other than David.

“Did I say something funny?” He tries to laugh like he’s in on the joke.

“I’m a lightweight, boss. Don’t mind me,” Emma tells him waving it off. “I’ll laugh at anything.”

“Good,” David presses his lips together and she can feel he’s about to drop something on her. “Because you have have a nine AM with the mayor tomorrow.” The bastard has the audacity to grin.

Emma asks for another round.

* * *

Regina’s desk is meant to be a barrier, something to separate the mayor from anyone who dares to stay long enough and sit. It makes her feel special to be seating so comfortably in front of it. Acting like she isn’t watching how the Sun makes Regina’s hair change shades under it. She’s a longing idiot, she’s aware.

The morning light does something to Regina sitting with her shoulders straight and her coffee still smelling fresh on her desk. Emma hadn’t picked up on it that first morning with her bare legs and the basketful of apples. Not with the moon threatening Regina and their blood boiling. It suits her, her expression is sharper and her lips seem to curl easily in a way that makes Emma think about what Henry had said. How under the curse she’s not really herself yet she is. This should be confusing the hell out of her, like everything else about it, but this something she can put together. Emma doesn’t need magic to understand, she doesn’t think. Regina is who she needs to be, it’s a skill. She recognizes it from the tight smiles she used to give social workers whenever they questioned her, when a foster mom insisted she looked like a little princess in a purple and poofy dress that gave her a rash. Emma knows what it’s like to be yourself and not be, how to be pieces instead of a whole. And really, Emma has this probably dumb hope that they’re both wholly themselves when they’re alone. That this is what the damn electricity means.

“Should I take offense that the Sheriff keeps sending his deputy in his stead?” Regina’s brow is raised and there is just the beginning of an amused smile. Emma should find it insufferable but she has to lick her lips to keep them straight.

“He thinks you have a soft spot for me.” And she sounds like that Sunday night, eager and her blood rushing all over her. Emma wants to slap herself.

“I suppose I should be thankful there is not much detective work needed in Storybrooke.” Regina hesitates for half a second. “I won’t make it any easier on the Sheriff’s department, if that’s what he means.” She isn’t looking at Emma when she says this. She’s writing away at whatever needs to be fixed in order to be approved like she hadn’t just said those words.

Emma says nothing because it feels like it’s the right thing to do. Only nods  knowing full well Regina can sense it and wonders if her heart is in her throat too. If that’s why she isn’t looking at her. If that’s why Emma can’t stop looking at her.

* * *

 

She’s not really sure how magic is supposed to work, if it’s supposed to make her eyes follow  Regina. She’d know, wouldn’t she? She’d hate it, try to stop it. But Emma doesn’t, she doesn’t mind being caught in whatever it is that has wrapped itself around her. It’s like suddenly she’s aware of every atom that makes her up, of how they shift and jump when Regina is near. Maybe that’s what magic is meant to be or maybe it’s just Regina. They could be one in the same.They are, they are. It’s what she has to get to the bottom of after all, she can’t forget. It’s what running through her mind when it starts raining and she’s being attacked by the fattest raindrops known to man. Emma’s getting soaked and can’t see through all the water. She shrinks her shoulders and tries to run to shelter like somehow that’ll help. Her foot gets caught in tree’s root that has no business on a public sidewalk and Emma just barely keeps her face from hitting the ground. And then it’s there, coursing through her elbow and burning throughout her whole body. Regina’s touch, steadying her or maybe making her weaker in the knees. Fuck, fuck. It’s stopped raining and Emma’s almost willing to chalk it all up to the moment, that Regina can stop the rain for all she knows. It hadn’t occurred to her that umbrellas still exist in this world beyond the covered bridge.

“Cat-like reflexes you have there, Deputy.” Regina says lowly as if someone might hear them over all this rain.

“Storybrooke’s finest.” Emma replies in that same hush. She notices the small drops settled on the black of her coat just as she feels water travelling down her chest and her breathing becoming uneven. Goddamn Regina.

“However debatable that is, the town cannot afford the new hire to catch pneumonia.” She says without moving an inch.

“Yeah. The town.” As if on cue her voice turns raspy and her eyes narrow with the water that’s rushing past them.

Regina looks like she’s afraid to disturb whatever it is that has formed under the water. Breathe, and the bubble might burst. Eyes shining, in the middle of the day. How she’s holding Emma in them, even if it doesn’t last. And she gets it, really. Not wanting to move, to stay under this umbrella forever. Frozen like they seem to be. She can think of a million worse things. It’s over too soon, it was always going to be over too soon. Regina’s hand is away from her and Emma realizes she’s trembling. For a second Regina looks like she’s about to reach out again, like she knows her touch would make it all better. Instead she walks them towards town hall avoiding her eyes.

“Consider investing in rain wear.” Regina’s voice is still quiet.

“I’m sure the town doesn’t mind sharing its resources.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

* * *

 

The booth is harder this time around, Emma notices. The mug in her hands, now tingling with sparks and nerves, feels warmer. She doesn’t want to think of what shade of non-white her face is right now. It’s just the diner, with the squeaky fans and the old jukebox in the corner. But she’s sitting across Regina again. It’s the middle of month, two weeks away from Halloween and everything already smells of pumpkin. The leaves seem to be changing along with the delicate lines that form Regina’s face. It’s hard to pin down, it’s hard to think the moon is getting closer and closer and that the different ways her lips quirk up or how long she holds her gaze over Emma are all because of it. It’s especially hard to think it’s why Regina had stepped out of her Mayor Mills voice and without clearing her throat had asked Emma, not Deputy Swan, if she wanted to join her for coffee. Her reply, Emma’s sure, had come from somewhere deep inside her throat and sounded exactly how she felt. Taken. _Shit_.

“My father only put honey in his coffee,” Regina’s been speaking for a while but these words make her voice take a new quality. Rich and smooth. Emma has to believe that she’s right. That this is her being a whole sitting at a place where they’d last bared teeth. “Sugar cane when he had it. Granny only has maple syrup.”

Emma should say something, volunteer a piece of her back. She can recognize precious nuggets of information when she sees them. Not that she has any, all she has are pieces that shine under the right light. Enough to trick the eye.

“I don’t think mine is coffee anymore.” Emma says gesturing down to her mug and tries to think of something that’s good enough to share. Instead she pushes her mug towards Regina hoping that she can tell that words are failing her. It can’t all be the magic, curse or whatever, not the way Regina lets her fingertips brush against hers as she claims the mug for herself. Time is slowing down again as she lifts it up to her lips. A week ago, Regina couldn’t look at her, but now she lets her eyes find Emma’s. Then the stupid jukebox starts with that song about coconuts and jambo and it’s over.

“That is offensively sweet,” Regina tells her. It’s not about the coffee, not really. “It’s giving me a toothache.”

“It’s the only way one of my foster dads could get me to drink coffee. I had a hard time staying awake on bus rides when I was seven.” It’s what she has to give up, white sugar and too much milk instead of honey and sugarcane.

“No seven year old should be drinking coffee.” It’s what Regina doesn’t say that has her lungs expanding to take in all the air she needs. There is no hand to her chest, no quivering lip. The lines of her face are just the same as they had been minutes ago. They tell Emma that she knows the things inside her unmentionable boxes are rough and not made from glass. Like she has boxes of her own.

Emma’s smile is too fucking wide for what she had just shared and catches the way Regina’s eyes go from her lips to the rest of the room. As if she’d screwed up and revealed too much to the world. She honestly tries her hardest to tone it down, to not look at Regina because this cannot be another moment that’s gone in the blink of an eye.

“More coffee, Deputy? Madam Mayor?” Ruby says from behind them. It’s not Emma’s fault if her instincts have her looking up at her, at the way her lips parts and compares them to Regina’s.  And it’s like when she was drifting off that Sunday and they’d both had a weakness to their smiles.

“I’m good, Rubes.” Emma says feeling the curse in the air connecting them all, feels the energy burning on her skin and fingertips as she turns her gaze back to Regina.

“I’m fine for now, thank you.” And this time her face hasn’t hardened and gives Ruby a polite nod.

Ruby looks between them with those big eyes of hers and Emma thinks she knows exactly why Emma’s smile had been too wide.

“OK.” Is all she needs to say before walking away from their table.

* * *

 

These past few days, days nearing the beginning of the curse, Emma has been feeling like she should write a long letter of apology to her foster Wicca mother. Because yeah, now she’s starting to be grateful about accidents. Granted, her foster mom would have used words like cosmic and fateful, but she is happy that an error in paperwork had her stuck at the mayor’s office during lunch time. Now she’s even more thankful that Regina’s assistant had spilled tea over her and that her generic deputy appropriate shirt is now hanging to dry in the coat closet. No, she couldn’t leave her office looking like that. It’s what Regina had argued following the way her chest rose and fell under her tank top. Emma had let herself believe this would be the day that her gaze wouldn’t shift, that she wouldn’t suddenly pretend that the papers under her pen were more interesting. She’d wished she hadn’t looked away, like she always does. Still, with a twitch in her lips and a sigh Emma shouldn’t have noticed she’d called her assistant to place a lunch order. For two.

“I thought you said Storybrooke was lacking.” Emma says dunking her roll into soy sauce.

“Something has to be done with all the fish and shellfish caught here,” Regina carefully lining up her own plate and sauces. “Even if it’s just passable sushi.”

It’s a small round table they’re sitting at. Not meant for lunches for two, Regina’s legs are tucked to her side and a napkin is on her lap.It would have helped to have had this image in third grade when she was trying to remember just what the hell immaculate meant. Emma looks up right as as another roll is halfway to her mouth and she’s afraid it’ll slip and Regina’s is slightly shaking her head.

“What?” Emma asks just before she puts the whole thing in her mouth, probably making her look like a blowfish.

“Henry eats it in the same way. Drenched in soy sauce,” It’s fond, Emma realizes and suddenly she’s not so sure she’ll be able to walk out of this room without her knees buckling at least once. “By the time he’s done with it the rice is black. Salty enough that a cow would lick it off his plate.”

“Ah..a cow? What?”

“Cows love salt.” Her voice is just like Henry’s when he’s explaining moon cycles to her and magic. Like it’s something so obvious. “My father’s family owns cattle.”

Emma thinks that there must be small things that seem to earn her these revelations from Regina. Like soy sauce. She wants to know all the details behind them, know just what they are so she can keep being let in like this. Feeling she has a place at her table.

“Didn’t take you for a farm girl.” Emma tells her lightly.

“I..ah..well,” Regina is thinking about something rough and prickly from her unmentionable boxes, Emma can tell by the way air seems to be stuck in her chest. “I can see how you’d think that.”

There’s so much she needs to ask, so much she needs to know, Emma wants to say. She can’t, not without risking losing this moment. It’s too long and silence has settled between them. And she thinks that it’s over, again. Even if the air is still charged as it always is. But then the smallest and dumbest thing happens. And really, she should be thanking whatever stars have lined up for her today. A green paste is smeared on the corner of Regina’s mouth. The rarest of all moments, a gift. Because it isn’t over. Not yet. Emma reaches across the table and wipes away. She shouldn’t have touched her face, maybe. It’s all she can feel now, all her brain can think about. Especially with Regina’s widened eyes and steady gaze. It’s like the world has zoomed out and they’re only ones left in a vacuum. Her voice won’t come out of her throat as she feels Regina leaning into her touch. Into the hand, which Emma’s sure has a mind of its own, that had dared to stay on her cheek. The phone rings, and it’s too loud and Emma has never hated a phone more in her life.

This time, Emma is starting to believe in even more things, the moment is untouched. Even as she pulls away from her and feels her face red and her hand practically on fire. And Regina is watching her, eyes that have turned mischievous. Enjoying the way Emma has been reduced to a puddle. She thinks she’ll melt off her seat. All her words a string of fuck and God, damn it.How the hell could this be a product of a curse? She’ll find out and prove that this exists outside of it. Because this feels pretty goddamn holy to Emma. This is the point of no return, it’s pretty clear. Not that she’d want go back. Not ever.

“You should get that.” Emma says feeling a strain in her words.

“I should.”

The phone keeps ringing.

* * *

 

Emma’s whole body is shaking. No. _Humming._ Her brain is trying to remember what excuse she had used to get through Regina’s door. It can’t find it. It doesn’t matter. She had to see Regina tonight. The first moon is tomorrow and she’ll hide away from her. The Bug and her patrol car had been left forgotten like only running towards this old house made sense. She’d thought the roughness of the cold air would do, cool her down. Make her think full thoughts instead of just fragments and flashing images of brown eyes and curled lips. It’s like she’s running a fever. It’s a fact that this is all her. Dumb beating heart, scorching skin and nerves on edge. It’s Regina. They’re in her study again. It feels like they’re playing a game of chicken, who will be the first to blink. It’s the intensity of her gaze that gets Emma. Weeks ago Regina was looking at anything but her but tonight it’s like she’s running a fever too. Her drink has ice in it this time, it clinks and clinks against the glass but she’s not cooling down. Her leg is bouncing as she sits on a sofa facing Regina standing over the dry bar. A skirt that should be illegal in all fifty states hugs her figure. No. The ice is definitely not helping.

“Where’s Henry?” Emma asks. It’s not even late, barely past eight on a Friday night. He hadn’t run down to meet her. And there’s no thumping around upstairs. It’s a shameless question, she knows.

“At a sleepover,” For a second her expression changes into something gentler. “He hardly gets invited to things. I thought it’d be good for him.”

“He’s a great a kid. Everyone just needs to pick up on it.”She replies with her heart beating everywhere at once.  “So you were just going to…?”

“Have a quiet night.” Regina says carefully pronouncing each syllable. Like it’s a spell.

“Right. Of course.” Emma doesn’t know how much longer this can last, if she’ll explode in the next few seconds.

“What do you want from me, Emma?” Regina sounds like she’s feeling this same thing that will burst out of her.

“You’ve asked me that before.”

“And you didn’t answer then.” Regina runs a hand through her hair.

“No. I didn’t.” The glass is cold against her hand but she grips it harder anyway. The fever, the electricity aren’t leaving her any time soon. And right about now, she doesn’t care who blinks  first anymore.

Regina licks her lips like she’s bracing herself. “What did you come for?”

“You. Just you.” She sets her drink down on the coffee table and turns back to Regina. She’s not moving, barely breathing. It was a mistake. Of course it was. Shit. She thinks to bolt out that door. Even if every fucking part of her, stupid and smart, tells her to stay. “I’m sorry.”

Her legs feel heavier as she moves them and now her face is hot with embarrassment. Emma’s hand is on the doorknob but then there’s Regina’s hand on hers. It stays there and her body is practically screaming. She’s not sure she isn’t. Feeling hazy, her eyes find Regina’s. Dark and unwavering. There’s a nod that almost gets lost in Regina’s shallow breathing and their locking fingers. Maybe it’s a pull or a push but her free hand finds the back of Regina’s neck just like her lips find Emma's. She’d been taught that the universe had begun with an explosion billions and billions of years ago. This is what it must have felt like. To be nothing and suddenly be everything.

Human skin isn’t meant to light up like this in the moonlight.It isn’t supposed to feel smoother than the cotton of the sheets underneath them. Emma doesn’t care what's making this possible, magic or not. She only cares about what it’s like to feel Regina all of herself, to let her body keep humming. Every inch that Regina’s fingers have touched feels lit up and she can’t explain it. It’s like something is being pulled out from her, something she didn’t know she had. A light, maybe. It feels that way when Regina’s lips are on her neck and cool nails are going down her back. They’re saying each other’s name like it’s what keeps them alive, saying them between God, God. Emma can’t remember if it’s just the two of them existing right now, if anything is real beyond this. If there’d ever been anything outside Regina’s softness, anything besides the growing hoarseness of her voice. Fuck. No, there hadn’t been. It feels like a half remembered dream already. The kind that Emma held onto but pretended she didn’t. And that’s what she wants to do, hold on. As if she had never been a runner, like she had never been terrified of _wanting_ this badly.

She wants to think of the right words as she lies next to Regina, who keeps glowing and glowing. Emma would babble, she thinks, because isn’t that what you do when you’re totally fucking dumbstruck? Her fingers roam Regina’s chest and down to her navel tracing everything in their path. Emma doesn’t know what she had expected to find as she looks up at Regina’s face. Not fear, not shame but that’s what’s there, obscuring anything else she might be feeling. It’s sucking everything out of her. It’s like she’s scared that the whole world had heard them, seen them. It’s tearing Emma apart. She remembers it. Being younger and out in the street after her foster sister had run and told just what she had been doing with that girl from the center. Burning and wanting the world to burn with her.

“It’s OK, Regina.” Emma says quietly but even that feels loud.

“What is?” Her voice is even lower. Small like she had never heard it.

“This,” Emma needs it to sound strong for her sake. “Plenty of people have a lot to be ashamed of, to feel guilty about. Hell, there are some real assholes out in the world. But this? This doesn’t make us bad people.” She’s almost out of breath and trembling as she gets the last words out.

Regina nods and bites her lips trying to keep her eyes from watering.

“I’ll leave if that’s what you want me to do..I’ll”

“It’s not.” It’s all Regina says, another word and her voice might crack.

Her eyes close but her breathing is short and her face is restless. Emma can feel the turmoil radiating off her skin, pricking the tip of her fingers like a needle.Regina curls up against her and Emma stays. An arm loosely holding her. The curse will be hurting her tomorrow, Emma knows, but she’s hurting tonight and it’s got nothing to do with the moon.

* * *

 

Henry had been thrilled to _finally_ be talking about Operation Cobra. Not that they hadn’t been discussing it here and there for a month. Mostly he’d given her looks whenever he thought he saw something weird. Or he’d crane his neck, Emma had thought he’d pop it, to gesture at someone that needed to be watched. Not once had he done with this with Ruby. Not that Emma could blame him, he’d been searching for something big. Something that’d catch his eye without too much trouble. Plus it’s easy to overlook Ruby in her jean cut offs and the way she hides her smokes behind her back whenever she thinks Granny is near. It’s too simple to focus on a smile and not what it hides. Henry’s just a kid and a big part of her wishes he never comes to understand shit like this. But then of course she’d remember how he’d hopped on a bus to find her and realizes it may be too late for that. For better or worse, kid’s her partner.

“Tomorrow’s the third moon.” He’d told her, like she’d forgotten. It’s the way that she’d still been drunk on Regina that’d made her look that way. She hadn’t heard one word David had spoken to her the morning after.

“I know.” Emma had taken a big bite off her hot dog. They’d been at the pier. She’d thought the water might drown the conversation. No chance of being overheard.

“So….where are we going? What are we doing?” It’d been easy to see he had a thousand more questions.

“Henry…”She hadn’t even sounded impatient because she’d expected it. “You already have one scar, you don’t need another one.”

“So I don’t get to out on the field?”He’d definitely been watching stuff he wasn’t supposed to judging by his frown. Maybe he’ll be wearing a trench coat and a badge to go trick or treating.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t need your help, though.” She’d bumped her shoulder against his, just enough to give him an encouraging nudge. “What do you know about Widow’s Peak?”

“Why?”

“I have a hunch.”

It’s colder out now than it had been when she’d followed Leroy into the woods. Widow’s Peak is different. It’s not really a peak, for starters. Turns out they just call it that because it’s the highest place in town, according to Henry. And the widow part, no one’s really figured out. Can’t decide if some Elizabeth person had become a widow there or if she’d come to live here after. Not that it matters. Not when she’s up a tree and she can see her breath. She’d better be right. Emma hadn’t followed Ruby around today, she thought her hunch would be enough. If the curse does the same every month, she assumes, then it figures everyone will return to the same spots too. There must have been a reason why bear Leroy hadn’t been able to chase them out of the woods. At least, that’s what she’d concluded. If one of those three pigs had seen Ruby in Widow’s Peak last month, odds are she’d be here again. Being up in the tree gives her a better view. And keeps her safe, she doesn’t have the slightest clue about what Ruby might turn into. She’d been another question mark in Henry’s journal. All he had on her was “keeps saying she’ll leave town but never does. People talk.” Emma hadn’t bothered to ask for more details.  

The peak looks over the sea and it lights up from the water and the moon. It makes it seem like it’s almost not dark out. Like there is nothing that could hide in the night. No surprises. Emma sighs and holds to the branch she hopes won’t break. Her ass could never survive a fall like that. She checks her watch. Ten til midnight. If she’s wrong a whole month would have gone by. Wasted. And breaking this curse had never seemed so urgent after she’d woken up with Regina still in her arms. She’d watched Emma get dressed and said nothing. There’d been that thing that had them falling into each other again. Emma with her unbuttoned shirt and hanging from her and Regina’s skin still with that impossible glow. It’d had her wondering if she’d looked the same to Regina, if there was some new shine to her.  She’d held on to Emma will all her strength.She’d  felt the marks when water had hit her back later that morning and all the way til today. Emma’s scared out of her mind. Feels like this way out of her fucking depth. The cost of failing is too high now. Now that she knows that Regina tastes like fall and that Henry has a scar instead of stitches.

Ruby appears quietly just five minutes before midnight, dressed for a hot summer day. She’s pulling at her clothes and Emma almost expects steam to come out of her. It’s not like Leroy, she’s not fuming or pacing around. She stands and keeps looking over her shoulder, as if she’s checking that no one has followed her. That no one will be able to see her, that this will stay in the woods. She’s terrified and alone. That look on her face almost makes Emma jump down from her spot but she remembers why she’s here. There’s nothing she can do tonight other than watch. No matter how much she hates it, no matter how familiar and recent this feeling is. This has to happen.

The curse keeps its schedule, she will say that about it. Emma braces herself for cracking bones and skin being torn apart. Grunts and groans of pain. But they don’t come. Ruby is completely silent, afraid that she will be heard. Her clothes are quickly tossed away and Emma looks away because this she won’t see. There’s a whimper after a minute or two that has her raising her eyes. Ruby’s back is to her, hair falling long on her bare back and her face pointed towards the moon. Like she’s not allowed to look at anything else. Emma feels something inside her break, or rather something that been pieced back together break all over again.  A blue mist surrounds Ruby as she cries stepping out of her skin, not minding the blood underneath her feet. It’s like she’s getting undressed for a second a time. Her discarded skin looks like a rubber suit and Emma’s brain can hardly register it as real. Ruby’s face looks like a mask on the ground, hollow and plain fucking lifeless.There’s fur instead of skin again, grey and smooth. Emma hadn’t even noticed Ruby falling on her paws and the tail that curled just above her back. It’s the first time she’s ever seen a wolf. She’s slim and delicate, where Leroy had been huge and rough.

Ruby’s whimpering is the only sound Emma can hear. She pants over to the edge of the ground, where the peak turns into a cliff just above the water. It’s where she sits, the place where she can look at the moon over the sea. A howl pierces through the air and Emma feels her cheeks getting wet. Feels her chest become smaller and her breath trapped somewhere between her ribs. She keeps howling at the moon, hoping that it will be able to hear her. That it will be able to save her. That anyone will.

“I think you can really do it. I think you can break the curse.” Henry had told her as they left the pier that day.

“Hmm...how are you so sure?” Her voice had been playful because she had no faith in herself.

“I saw mom trying not to laugh at one of your jokes the other day. And it wasn’t even funny.”

Emma keeps crying as those words ring in her ears alongside Ruby’s lonely howls.

  



	5. Fishpeople Or the Dangers of Losing your Voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: mentions of child abuse and racism. Like homophobia in previous chapter, there are no slurs but it's present in the chapter.

Water. Emma is going through Henry’s journal again, taking a few cues from him. Trying to tie someone to the curse, instead of the other way around. Leroy and Ruby had been luck, she had managed to pick up on them. But to unravel this whole thing she is going to need more than that. It’s the water, the sea actually, that’s related in some way to the curse. She doesn’t understand how but she doesn’t need to connect all the dots right now. Soon, but not yet. Really she just wants confirmation that the kid shares her suspicions. She thinks that Mr. Havgud, who calls himself King of the Seas because he owns all the goddamn fishing boats in town, is involved somehow. Not exactly A+ detective work but she is running with it, working on the assumption that he is the one to watch. There’s enough time until the moon. 

Havgud has seven daughters, who even has seven kids in this day and age? All their names begin with A and Emma can barely keep up with them. According to Henry everyone in town is in love with a different one.Watching them have dinner at Granny’s she can understand why. They’re the kind of girls that’d lure anyone to their deaths just by looking at them. Flowy hair and dresses. Walk like they’re actually floating, they make everything they do look easy. Graceful. He’s a proud man, Havgud. He sort of has to be to call himself something so ridiculous. He has a gray and trimmed beard and he towers over everyone in town.Still dresses like a fisherman, and the girls all fall in line with him. They all say stuff  “yes, daddy” and “if you want me to”. And this is just one dinner. Emma doesn’t like him.

“Ari, always so quiet! Always daydreaming!” He scolds one of his daughters The look on his face has Emma wondering if this what all fathers are like. 

The smallest girl at the end of the table looks up. She has bright red hair and blue eyes that had just turned glassy when she heard her father’s voice.

“I’m sorry, daddy.” She says looking even smaller. 

“What were you thinking about  _ this _ time?” One of her sisters asks her. She sounds tired, like someone who’s given up on a math problem. 

“Next week’s service.” Ari’s hand goes to her hair and twirls a lock around her fingers. It’s not really a lie, Emma can tell from where she’s sitting. But it’s not the truth either. 

There it is, Emma’s body is practically picking up on signs of the curse on its own. The way the air seems heavier around Ari, the way she shifts in her seat. Like she’s restless but isn’t allowed to be. She holds on to her fork tightly, like all her energy is going to the metal. Daydreaming may not be daydreaming at all. The girl could just be trying to fucking breathe. She couldn’t care less about Havgud now, doesn’t care what the moon turns him into. Not when his daughter hums to herself as the rest of her family talks over her. 

She’s a good kid, Emma learns. Barely sixteen and has one friend, according to Henry. She needs help for anything that requires concentration, he knows because they share a math tutor. Ari sings to herself, quiet when she isn't. Seems like the only time this is welcomed by anyone is the Sunday service at the one church Storybrooke has. Henry asks Emma how is that she picked her out of all of her sisters. And she really wants to give him a simple answer. She doesn’t want to say that she can just feel the curse on some people, because there’s something inside her Emma can’t really explain. Not to him, especially. It’s not like she can tell him that she’s following the lines of his mother’s face. Or that maybe she was able to pick Ari out of the crowd that’s her family because Regina had pulled that something out from her. And Emma is just more now. Kid doesn’t need that kind of thing. 

“I guess you just know.”  It’s crap but it’s the best she could come up with. 

“Like a sixth sense?”

“Something like that.”

Henry doesn’t look satisfied with her answer.

* * *

 

It’s Saturday night. A week after the beginning of the curse, last Saturday she wouldn’t have counted on being back at Regina’s house so soon. Just dinner, this time. She needs to get her mind out of the gutter for fuck’s sake. What had really cut right through her is how she’d been told by Madam Mayor to arrive early. Deputy Swan had smiled and asked if that stack of paperwork couldn’t wait til Monday. The mayor had rolled her eyes at her and walked away without another word. 

It’s the apron that throws her off. It looks like something a six year old Henry might have picked out and actually used for fingerpainting. But still, it’s tied around Regina’s waist and over what’s left of a powersuit. Regina looks like the poster of the modern woman of the 90s. It’s one of her worse and not-so-funny jokes so she keeps it to herself. Watching her move around the kitchen, with a gentle hum as she opens cabinets and tastes her sauce, Emma realizes that there are different faces to her softness too. She’d been keeping tally of them, she has to be honest with herself. Regina has those just-for-Henry expressions to her, like she can’t believe he’s hers. Like she can’t understand that she gets to love him. And those are the brightest, especially when the kid is smiling and hugging her back. There’s the way her face rearranges itself whenever she steps out into the cold, almost like she’s greeting an old friend. This humming-while-cooking one is new to Emma. The lines of her face tell her it’s a sort of calm and relief, like she hadn’t been able to do this for the longest time. No. Like she’s finally allowed to do it. Sitting on a stool in Regina’s kitchen she wonders of what causes them and wants to know even more than what hardens her face.

“Are you just going to sit there or are you actually going to help me?” She asks from over the stove. 

“Me?” Emma asks swallowing back every thought. 

Regina just throws her a look over her shoulder, like she can’t believe a question this stupid exists. Emma is hesitant to leave the safety of her stool, where she can’t ruin things and just watch. But Regina has an apron tied around her and the air smells of spices she had never learned to name, that’s more than enough to get to slide off and tie her hair up into a ponytail. She stands next to Regina on the stove suddenly aware of how big this feels on her. Remembers thinking that moments like these would never be hers or that maybe they didn’t exist at all. This is turning into a recurring thought, that this has to be all them. She’s scared of the possibility that magic could do this. Give her this. But she doesn’t remember casting any spells and believe in what she does know, it does not include wishes from the back of her mind being granted this easily. 

“How good are you with a knife?” 

“That sounds like a trick question, Madam Mayor.” Emma says licking her lips. 

“If you’re going to arrest yourself…” Her eyes read Emma’s expression who is just about to laugh and make a joke about handcuffs.. “Don’t.” 

Turns out she is ridiculously bad with a knife. At least at what Regina has her doing with it. She shows her how to do it, right after smiling too fucking smugly watching Emma trying to peel a plantain like a banana.  _ Because it looks like a damn banana. _

“You want to cut it diagonally.” Regina tells her and Emma is hoping that this an excuse to take her hands because she just can’t get it right. 

“Why?” She asks as her piece comes out chunky and too round. Not like Regina’s thin and oval ones. 

“So it will fry properly.” There is a small hum in the back of her words. Emma almost wants to ask if she’s happy. But that'd be dumb, even by her standards. Especially by her runner standards. 

“Where you learn all this?” The next piece is a little better. 

Regina shakes her head and Emma could almost flinch, expecting a blow back. Fuck. Because maybe she’d unboxed something that was supposed to stay in. “Most people would assume…”Regina’s voice trails off. 

“Would assume what?” She doesn’t need to add that she’s not most people. She knows most people don’t get to see this. Get to see her. 

“That mother taught me.” It’s unpacked and her face isn’t so soft anymore. Emma doesn’t miss how she doesn’t say “mom”, doesn’t say “my”. She’d never heard it like that. 

“Daddy used to take me back to Puerto Rico when he could,” Her hand is steady around her own knife. “I spent a lot of time in kitchens there. Mother...well she didn’t like that too much.” 

Emma doesn’t press even she needs to know. Instead she catches her eye and says “I make a mean Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.” 

“I don’t doubt that.”The softness isn’t quite back but her eyebrow is quirking up. 

“Is that meant to be insulting?” 

“That sounds like a trick question, Deputy.” 

Henry munches on the plantain chips, says he really likes the chunky ones even if Emma knows they’re a little too starchy. He had raised an eyebrow, identical to Regina’s, when he had found Emma in the kitchen. And she feels a little guilty, yeah. It strikes her that she’s sharing two separate secrets with them. Henry doesn’t know about lunches and coffee, and just how soft skin can feel. They can’t tell him. Regina doesn’t know about almost-bad-and-dry pier hot dogs and monster talk. She can’t know. Henry looks happy sitting here at the table, like they’re all secret-free. He keeps looking back and forth between them as he tells them about his day at the library today. 

“And was Lilo there too?” Regina asks him and it’s not like all the mothers she’d gone through when they had only tried to care. It’s just there without a second thought. 

“Yeah. Checked out that book about Elvis again.” It’d been his biggest problem today and Emma wants all his days to be like this. 

“Lilo. She’s the one with the weird dog, right?” Emma chimes while she’s busy sprinkling white and salty cheese over what’s left of her food.  

“He has three legs, Emma. That doesn’t make him weird.” Henry says like he can’t believe she had just asked that. 

“I meant because he chases me around every time he sees me. Every time.” She means it. Lilo and her older sister live in her building and that weird dog just has it in for her. 

“You can hardly blame the poor thing. It has good instincts.” Regina replies somehow managing to keep her hands sauce-free as she scoops meat and beans with a chip. 

“Hey!”

Henry laughs so hard that Emma forgets to be terrified. 

* * *

 

Regina asks her to stay again. It’s quiet and she’s sure Emma had asked it every time she had so much as glanced at Regina during dinner. She’s not exactly the picture of smoothness, nodding and stuffing her hands into her pockets. There is no fever this time, no hope that she will cool down. It doesn’t mean that the charge that she’s come to accept as part of her daily life isn’t there. Emma thought that it would have driven out of her mind, that she would understand it less not more as time went by. That was past Emma. Now that it’s late at night and Regina’s hand is in hers under soft covers and fear creeps in like autumn cold that will turn into winter freeze. Some of those old thoughts, that if they looked like anything they'd look like raggedy and holed socks, come back to remind her to be afraid. Of how often she has run. Run before she’s tossed out like the used fucking dirty rag that she is. Emma thinks of all the times she had fought to try to change things, to change herself as a kid. Maybe if she had smiled a little more, maybe if she her voice hadn’t been so loud she would have gotten to stay. All she had managed to do was feel more and more trapped. Tears sting her eyes, and Emma hates it. At least Regina’s eyes are closed. But then her fingers squeeze Emma’s hand just enough to make her jump. 

“I thought you were asleep.” Her voice sounds shaky

“I was.” Regina whispers back. Emma thinks she’s about to confess to having magic. That maybe she’ll tell her it was magic that woke her up. 

“Sorry.” Emma says quietly when she realizes they’ll be no explanation. If Regina sees her tears she can’t tell. “Did you ever..” The words come out unsteady before she can stop herself. 

“Did I ever what?” 

Emma swallows the way she does when there is a chill at the bottom of her spine and her pulse is going crazy. “Did you ever feel like you weren’t enough?” 

Regina turns to lie on her back and stares up at the ceiling. Her hand hasn’t slipped from Emma’s and she can feel it throbbing. She’d been stupid to say anything at all, Emma thinks by the way Regina sighs so heavily. 

“Yes,” She finally answers. “When I was a girl, maybe four, mother took a brush to my skin. She scrubbed until it was red.” 

“Why?” Emma understands this to be a revelation, as big as they could ever get. 

“I was born wrong,” Regina laughs like she’s trying to make it disappear. It’s bitter and sad all in one. “It’s what she said then, and that’s when I first knew. I would never be enough.” 

Emma should say that she is more than enough. More than anyone had any right to ask. Instead she squeezes her hand. 

“I was almost adopted when I was three. But then they..umm..she got pregnant,” Emma doesn’t exactly know what to call her, the woman who had almost been her mother. “So they sent me back. After that I...” 

“You felt like there was nothing you could do,” It’s another whisper. “But you kept trying anyway.” 

“Yeah. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Keep beating at the glass to see if it breaks.” 

“But it never does. And you’ve been at it for so long you can’t recognize yourself.” 

“They’d give you pointers at the center. Sometimes it was a social workers, most of the time it was other kids. Like there were steps you could follow, to be more of what you needed to be.” Emma doesn’t want her voice to be cracking like it is.

“I always thought that if..I..well, if I hid everything mother didn’t like. I thought maybe..she could. Maybe she’d love me,” Emma can make out her expression through the dark and thinks that this kind of softness hurts. It’s wet and suffocating.  “Never did figure out how to hide the whole of me.” 

“You don’t need to hide from me.” The words come out like a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. 

All Emma wants to do is tell her she knows about the curse. That it doesn’t matter what she is under the moon, but that she’s trying to break it anyway. If she could just... but Emma doesn’t want to be sent back again. Away from this place she wants to badly to be hers. It’s not something she could survive. Not a fucking chance.  She has to bear with this until the curse is broken. Regina turns to her side and kisses her lightly on the lips. She doesn’t say anything else, just keeps Emma’s hand in hers. It’s enough.

* * *

 

Emma never quite figured out what made pews so uncomfortable. Maybe they’re supposed to make sinners hurt? Who knows. She’d hardly grown up going to church, any church, but every pew she’d ever sat on made her ass hurt. It’s the only church in town, probably built by Pilgrims. All white and with a bell that’s sure to wake up anyone that live nears it. Which means the whole town is awake at eight on Sundays whether they want to be or not. Unholy if you ask her. It’s her first time here, she’d barely made it. She’d left Regina before Henry had a chance to get up, before anyone could see her leaving. Mary Margaret had not noticed her slipping into their place and Emma dreads the day she asks for an explanation. The springs of her bed had jumped up to meet her body when she’d thrown herself on it. Her less comfortable and cold bed, to catch an extra hour of sleep. That had almost cost her missing service. She’s fighting her yawns with all the her strength.

Almost everyone in town is here, like this is the one place they can all be quiet and pretend for a little while that they don’t have secrets that are eating away at them. Up front she can make out Henry and Regina’s figures. The kid’s leaning into Regina’s arm, obviously fighting sleep. She can’t see their faces from where she’s sitting, doesn’t know what Regina’s expression might be like. What type of hardness it might be wearing now. Of course she questions if Regina wants to be here in the first place. Maybe not, but Mayor Mills sure needs to be, in her best Sunday clothes and coiffed hair. Looking and holding herself like she needs to, less than what she is. There’s a knot in her throat and she’s glad there’s no one to talk to. Emma is only half listening to the Reverend’s words, she hears something about silver coins and pre-ordained things. God’s plan, great love and sacrifice. She stands a few seconds behind everyone else and keeps quiet as they repeat a prayer or verse. There’s no way to be sure what it is. The Reverend asks them to sit and the choir seems about ready to break out in song. Finally, this is what she had come from.

Ari is standing in the middle, Emma assumes she must be important. At first only the organ can be heard and then the girl steadies herself. She stands taller as she takes a deep breath, like this is the only time she’s allowed to be this way. Her lips part and then there it is. No girl she ever knew sang like that. Her voice, somehow strong and gentle, manages to carry throughout the whole place. Emma can’t make out the words but she doesn’t think they matter much, for Ari is more about being able to use her lungs and be heard. Even if just once a week, even no one can follow what she’s saying. This is all she wants. That moment when it all feels worth it because she can shake off whatever it is she hides behind. It’s piercing right through her, giving her goosebumps. 

After the piece is done Emma almost puts her hands together to clap. She frowns when she realizes that no one will do this, that this is business as usual for them. Like the girl hadn’t just sung her fucking heart out. Still, she stands as they all do and keeps watching Ari. She’s back at twirling a lock of hair around her finger but she’s looking at someone and she can’t help that dreamy smile. Following her eyes Emma’s own gaze lands on another girl, not one of her sisters. She has black curly hair and dark skin, completely unaware that Ari is looking at her. The curse is cruel. 

It could be the wrong thing to stay behind and try to talk to Ari. But she has to, not only to connect all the dots in a larger picture doesn’t yet see but because she’d seen her at the diner and she’d seen her now. She remembers Ruby’s lonely howl and Regina’s wish to hide all she thought unlovable about her. It’s why she’s walking down the aisle after everyone else is gone, even after exchanging a just-polite nod with Regina. The girl is just as delicate as her sisters, a type of graceful that seems made up. The kind only made up princesses are supposed to have. She doesn’t want to think about whether this type of thing is genetic or if it had somehow been forced onto Ari. 

“Hey.” Emma says as softly as she can. Ari jumps anyway. 

“Umm..hi.” She replies stepping out of her choir uniform. “Am I in trouble?”

“No...why would you be?” She asks remembering that dreamy smile and wandering gaze and understands. 

“Aah..well..you’re the deputy, right?” Ari’s voice is so small, barely above a whisper. 

“Doesn’t mean you did anything wrong,” Emma tilts her head to look into her eyes, already turning glassy. “I just wanted to come tell you I loved your singing.” 

“Oh?”  It’s the tone of surprise that threatens to break Emma’s heart. “You did?” 

“Yeah, I really did. You like it a lot, don’t you?”

Ari nods enthusiastically. “I guess...I guess it makes me feel like..I’m...good...”

“Hey, you are good. Even if…” 

“Ari!” Her father’s voice comes booming from behind them. “Hurry along! You’re making us late for breakfast.” 

The girl flinches at the sound of her father’s voice. Emma decides she doesn’t just dislike him, she could easily hate him. For making the girl jump out of her skin like this.  _ Fuck him.  _

“I have to go now.” It’s what Emma manages to make out as Ari rushes past her. 

She’s left watching how she seems to get lost when she’s among her sisters. Emma balls her hands into fists as she leaves.Church was supposed to feel people feel lighter, right? Better. Well, it hadn’t worked. 

* * *

 

Emma keeps marking the days off in a wall calendar. Drawing that X at the end of each day has become a nightly ritual for her, only broken on the few nights she’s been with Regina. The nights after she’s gotten special satisfaction of crossing off two days. Like time has sped up without Regina. She remembers how it seems to slow down, how the electricity makes moments feel longer. She hadn’t exactly counted on ordinary impatience making days move so damn slow. There is still a good two weeks to the next moon. Two weeks of waiting, of pretending she’s actually getting somewhere.There’s a bounce to her legs every time she sits now. The wooden bench in town hall, just outside Regina’s office, is squeaking with her every move. It’s the only sound on this day that’s a precious seven hours from being over.  A door opens and a man and woman come out of the office. He’s muttering to himself and she’s scowling. Emma hopes they just go so she doesn’t have to hear whatever comes out their mouths. But they settle next to her. Great. 

“Just like her mother,” He tells who Emma assumes to be his wife. “Both heartless bitches…”

“Richard..shh!!” She hits him lightly on his arm and gestures towards Emma.

“Remember how she ran those folk outta town? Brought out that dirty money and they were gone!” 

The bounce in her leg gets worse and she’s holding onto the armrest with all her strength. 

“That’s not what she’s doing.” The woman says quietly

“Like hell it isn’t! She’s a witch too! How else do you think she..she..”

“Richard!” She gets up and holds out her hand. “We need to go home now.” 

Good, Emma thinks. Because one more minute of that shit and she might have lost any trace of her cool. Regina’s assistant comes to fetch her, she’s even stopped saying  _ the mayor will see you now _ to tell her it’s alright to go in. She steps into Regina’s office, ears still ringing with what she’d heard. Ready to say  _ hey that guy's an asshole, who cares if you’re a witch? You’re nothing like your mother.  _ Of course they all die down the moment she looks at Regina, pouring herself a drink from the drawer that no one but Emma knows about. Her eyeliner is just a bit smudged at the ends and the used tissue on her trash bin doesn’t escape her notice.

“Please tell me you’re not here on official business.” Regina says rubbing her temples with two fingers. 

“It can wait.” Emma replies taking her usual seat in front of that large desk of hers. She looks small behind it today. 

“Thank you.” She sounds so young and Emma wonders just when Regina had started thanking people for showing her an inch of kindness. 

All she can think of now is a little dark haired girl wrapped in a coat that probably makes her skin crawl following her mother around. Her mother isn’t holding her hand, she’s more like pulling her along. The girl is barely able to keep up with her, and when it finally gets to be too much she asks her mother to slow down. Instead of saying  _ I’m sorry sweetheart _ like the way a mother would, like the way Regina would, she lets go of her hand and with a sneer she looks down on her daughter and says  _ You can find your own way home.  _ Emma doesn’t know quite what this is, if this just her brain trying to fill in the gaps between what she knows about Regina and her mother and what she doesn’t. It could be that current between them, it could be a part of her past. Part of that thing that had left her skin red and sore for days. Or it could not be. She keeps it all the same, like she’s keeping the way Regina’s breathing evens out with her eyes closed and her head thrown back. So different than when she sleeps, still so aware of everything around her. 

* * *

 

Maybe she’s calling these assholes with her thoughts, could be the curse or whatever. It doesn’t change the fact that she just happens to be on a grocery run for Mary Margaret, who’s too sick to move, and that every time she changes aisles these people change with her. Two middle aged women this time, one she’s fairly certain sits at the front of the church during each service and another she can’t really recognize. Not even loudly tossing cans into her cart is drowning their voices out. 

“That house has always belonged to this town.  _ Always _ . Not to someone who looked like Castro had just kicked him out. But then they moved into it. Talk about a slap to the face to the history of this place.” 

“I remember him. Never did make much of himself, did he? Other than those Sunday walks he had with Regina.” 

“Walking around like they owned the town,” The woman kisses her teeth. “But what could anyone do?” 

She almost shouts  _ enough _ but instead she rushes to pay, forgetting the last three things on Mary Margaret’s list. With the groceries heavy in her arms she sees the old floorboards at Regina’s house. The ones she has covered with big and expensive rugs. Emma sees all the furniture that doesn’t go with the house, like she had just thrown out the old on impulse and bought whatever she could to fill the space. She sees two sets of a baby’s first steps happening there. The first baby gets to her feet by pulling herself up by grabbing onto the rough edges of a coffee table. She has dark hair and looks determined as hell to get one foot in front of the other. And she does, three, four, five, six steps before she falls back down on the wooden floor. She cries loud enough that her father comes rushing into the room, not knowing what he had missed. Before he can bend down and pick her up, her mother is there and it only takes a shake of her head to stop him.

The second baby has his chubby fingers wrapped around his mother’s and she’s saying  _ Come on baby come on. There’s my boy!  _ She lets go, still half bent over him and hands hovering above him. He laughs like Emma remembers babies laugh when they’re happy. Like maybe she had at one point. Real, imagined, it doesn’t fucking matter. It feels heavy on Emma’s chest, her own first steps were probably in some group home with a nurse watching her clumsy pink legs move. Even that...even that had been better than what her brain, the magic, whatever the hell, is telling her Regina had had. She hates this curse, but it may not be the worst thing about this town. 

* * *

 

Meeting Henry at the pier has become a part of a routine now. Of course she realizes how weird and special that is, to have a fixed time and place to meet with someone. He’s late, but that’s fine. It’s a Sunday afternoon and kid’s basking in the time he gets to have with Regina before the curse kicks in. She gets it. Emma wants to be there too, enjoying whatever is left of fall on Regina’s couch, half asleep. Warm all over. Just listening to them speak, she’d be mumbling about how comfortable she is. Instead she feels the roughness of salt on her skin and rubs her thighs together. Maybe she should have thought to change meetup places considering how she might lose feeling in her face some time in the next minute. Still, it’s not a bad day. Not bad for the day before the first full moon. 

“How’s Stacy doing?” Emma can’t help but overhear. 

“Good, good.” The other man replies. 

“Fourth grade, right?” 

“Yeah. Leo’s girl’s class,” It takes Emma a second to realize he means Mary Margaret. “She’s great with the kids. Gentle as a flower.” 

“What’s it like having the Evil Queen on PTA with you?” She should have know, she should’ve know this would have followed her today. 

“Sheesh. You’re going to have to ask Julia about that. I don’t mess with that kind of thing.” 

“Kid’s a little off, isn’t he?” He says with a laugh. “Usually I’d blame it on her bad blood…” 

“The way I see it she’s gotta be a little messed up in the head to take in a kid that isn’t hers. Even if he’s dark like her. No husband in the picture too.” 

“If you ask me she’s ruining the boy. You know how they turn out.” He snorts. 

The only thing that’s keeping Emma standing against the railing instead of going at them is thinking of Henry and Regina. Of knowing the truth, of being certain that they’re wrong. This time she doesn’t need to fill in the gaps, she doesn’t need to ask herself if what she’s seeing is real or not. It all is. Henry’s smiles at his mother, that laugh that almost crosses the line into mockery when he and Regina are calling her something in Spanish that keeps going over her head. That afternoon she’d walked into the mayor’s office and he’d had this licking-his-wounds- look to him, early from school. There’d been a scrape on his chin and Regina had let her stay in with them. She’d heard her say that there was nothing wrong with him and no uncertain terms made sure he knew how loved he is. The way Regina buys him a milkshake after Church every Sunday and doesn’t bother asking if he had been listening at all. There is also how Emma remembers the word príncipe when Regina looks at Henry. 

It hits her then, the kid’s words from the day she still believe didn’t a curse existed. He’d told her that she needed to understand the curse if she wanted to break it. Why it had been cast in the first place and standing here, trying to stay put, she’s starting to see. Emma feels that impulse to hurt them, to get even. It’s not a new feeling, she’d felt every time an older kid called her a name and she’d pushed them to the ground. How many times had she imagined just what she’d do to a bad foster parent? To a teacher who seemed too mean? To the cops who arrested her? What she would have done if she had that kind of power in her.This is all she gets for now, this realization of just wanting to tear things apart to make them fair. Emma can’t run to Regina to figure this out, no matter how much she wants to. She shakes her head as if that would clear her thoughts. Just in time too, Henry is coming closer in the distance.  Emma rushes to meet him before he reaches this end of the pier. 

“Hey, kid,” Emma greets and resists the urge to pull him into a one-arm hug. “Let’s get out of here.” 

“Don’t want to be overheard?” He asks too excited for his own good as he nods towards to the two men. 

“Yeah. That’s exactly it.” Emma does her best to wiggle her eyebrows. “Besides, we need special equipment for today.” 

“About time.” His eyes light up. 

Henry is less than thrilled to discover that special equipment means a simple map. Not that she can blame the kid, looking at an old map at town hall on Sunday afternoon isn’t exactly her idea of fun either. 

“So where did we see Leroy?” She asks him as she places books at the four corners of the map to keep it from rolling into itself. 

“Here.” Henry places a pin on the right side of the map. A wooded area that eventually lead to the shoreline. 

“And this is Widow’s Peak, right?” She places another pin at the left side of the map. 

“You never told me what you saw there.” He lays down his accusation. 

“It doesn’t matter for what we’re trying to do right now.”Emma can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to explain Ruby to Henry. She shouldn’t, what she had seen is not something to be told to another. Let alone to a ten year old.

“It was a werewolf, wasn’t it?” Henry insists. 

“If I say yes, would you believe me?” Emma teases him.

“No. I’d just think you’re trying to get me to move on.” Kid’s probably the toughest partner she could have asked for. Not that she’d have it any other way. 

“Well then, I didn’t see a werewolf.” She grins.

“Fine. Don’t tell me.” He says running his fingers across the old map. “Why are we doing this?” 

“Remember how I said the sea had something to do with the curse?”

“Yeah.” 

“That can be kind of problem when you live in a fishing town,” Emma laughs but Henry doesn’t. “Anyway, I thought our best bet would have to be somewhere between the last two places we saw umm…” 

“Monsters?” He volunteers. 

“Incidents.” She corrects with the worst word she could’ve thought up. 

“OK. So that’s the beach, way past the rocky shore near the woods.” 

“Weird. You’d think...it’d be a little less out in the open like that.” She remembers Leroy in the clearing, Ruby looking over her shoulder. Why go where you can’t hide? Even if the rest of the town is busy turning into something else hiding would be someone’s first instinct. 

“Looks you’re gonna need to suit up, Emma!” Henry says, his index finger tapping on the blue of the map. 

“What, why?” 

“If it’s the beach, odds are it’s in the water, right?” 

“Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon?” Emma swallows back thinking of fish person coming up from the deep, mirroring her every stroke. 

“But there’s no lagoon?” He looks at her with his brow furrowed in confusion. 

“This town seriously needs a video-store,” Emma sighs and smiles. “We’re hitting one as soon as this is all over.” She says without a second thought, the words registering with her a second too late. Suddenly, she’s terrified again. 

* * *

 

“Ow! Stupid grass!” Henry complains lying next to her.  

They’re flat on their stomachs, the only way the tall grass would hide them is if they laid low. Kid’s not the biggest fan. 

“Shh...whisper.” Emma says scratching at her own neck. “It’s the price you pay for a stakeout.” 

“Did you get any snacks?” His over the top whisper has Emma almost planting her face into sand to stifle her laughter. 

Henry shouldn’t even be here, she had agreed against her better judgement. He had surprised outside the station today, with the excuse that he needed to talk to a public servant for homework. Nevermind that his mom is the mayor. He’d walked his bike and she’d carried the books that didn’t fit into his backpack. It’d felt like a needle in her heart, that mid-afternoon moment. Then, of course, kid had dropped the act and asked to be taken along with her tonight. He’d promised to stay out of the way, do as he was told. And, before she had the chance to object, he’d asked if a late night really mattered if tomorrow everyone would be out of it anyway? Emma had sighed, prepared to say no but then he’d had this one look to him. The one he gives Regina when he’s asking for an extra slice of pie or just an extra hour to finish a chapter of a book. That one she sees every time she stays and dares to call them hers for a few seconds. Shit. What could she have done other than melt?

“You didn’t bring your camera, right?” Emma asks him handing the one pudding cup she’d thought to bring. 

“No, you told me not to,” He very carefully peels the label back and chugging the thing down. She’d half expected for the kid to ask for a spoon being his mother’s son but he was wiping his mouth clean in no time. “Shouldn’t more people know about this?” 

“I…” Emma can’t really share the whole of her reasoning. He’s too young to understand, he’s still thinking of monsters and magic. He still wants to write everything down, treat it like a mystery that needs to be solved. It still is, but it’s not meant to be exposed. “I think it’s better if it stays secret. It’s safer for everyone that way.” 

“You’re worried about it falling into the wrong hands?” 

“Yeah, I guess. Yeah.” 

“Lucky I found you then.”He says so casually, so unaware of what his words really meant to her. This time she doesn’t resist ruffling his hair because she can’t really say _shit_ _ , kid. That’s really something.  _

Henry presses on the sides of his watch and the slime-green glow tells them both it’s five minutes til midnight. 

“Almost time.” Emma says propping herself on her elbows and looking through Henry’s binoculars. 

“I still think going in the water makes more sense.” He tells her in the same tone Regina uses to correct whatever hellish paperwork she hands into the Mayor’s office. 

“And freeze to death?” Emma shudders at the thought. And no, she wasn’t dropping three hundred bucks on a wetsuit to go chasing a sea-creature in the dead of night. 

“How are we supposed to…”

Emma nudges him and places a finger to her lips. Ari is walking along the beach, on bare feet. She’s letting the water reach past her ankles, like she’s asking the sea to drag her away. The girl comes closer and closer to their hiding spot. Henry goes so quiet that she almost wants to check if he’s still breathing. He can’t tear his eyes off Ari. It’s not hard to see why. The wind is caught in her hair, that stands out in the white of the moonlight. She looks as graceful as ever, what she always thought ballerinas would be like. Like she’s made of air. Emma is so busy watching her move through the rising tide that she had missed the expression on her face. Every step turns whatever small smile she’s forcing on herself  into a grimace. As if she were walking over broken glass instead of sand. Ari is wearing her Sunday dress, the one she usually keeps hidden under a large coat. White and bell shaped, something that makes her look even younger. 

She comes to a sudden stop watching water come and go as it his her legs. Henry’s watch flashes 0:00 AM and Emma begins to dread what will happen next. The girl suddenly looks like she’s out of air, gasping and gasping. Suffocating and crying all in one. Ari tries her hardest to keep standing but there comes a moment when she isn’t strong enough. The water finally wins and she falls to ground, the tide washing over her. Emma can’t help but think she looks like a stranded whale, struggling in the sand. There’s rustling next to her and she sees Henry getting to his feet, ready to run and help Ari. She manages to catch his ankle before he moves any further. 

“Henry, stop. You can’t.” She whispers. 

“Let me go! She needs help!” His voice is cracking. 

Emma stands up, sand stuck to her clothes and holds him close. “There’s nothing we can do for her.” She tries to soothe him because he’s crying now.

“Then what’s the point?” He asks her, eyes still on the beach. 

“Kid...I..” Her words are caught in her throat. Fuck. 

A black mist descends on Ari, who had curled herself into a ball. It’s thick but not like smoke. It’s almost pretty to look at, dark enough to hold stars. It begins to dissipate and even after a were-bear, a wolf, Emma still can’t believe her eyes. The girl had grown a tail. A fish tail, scaly and black. It’s curled to a side and it contrasts with the white of dress that is left over her. Ari turns to lie on her stomach and crawls into the water that had been pulling her in all this time. It seems like forever when she resurfaces again, red hair sticking to her face and neck. She dives and dives, as if she’s searching for a way out. Like maybe swim deep enough and she’ll find a way out of this place. Every time she breaks the surface she’s farther away, like maybe she’ll manage to swim an entire ocean in one night. It seems like the realization of there being no escape hits Ari as she swims back closer to shore. She’s trapped, trapped in a tank that looks an ocean. Needing the water to stay alive but whatever is left of her in this moment tells her it’s all wrong. 

There is a voice in the air, Emma recognizes it from Sunday service. It’s louder this time, like it’s bouncing off the rocks, it’s strong enough to almost drowns out the waves. There are no words, just a collection of sounds and hums. It’s beautiful, delicate. The kind of sound that’d make anyone cry, not really understanding why. With Henry still in her arms she falls back onto the ground, just to listen to Ari’s voice. Emma feels the kid’s breathing against her as the singing keeps echoing through them. It’s the saddest thing she’s ever heard. No matter how beautiful it is. The song keeps going, like she’ll never tire of singing. Maybe until she thinks she’s been heard or when she has no more sadness to let out. Henry is right to be angry to just be sitting here when she’s in the water but it’s the best they can do. Now they know she’s out here, now she’s become another pin in their map. Another dot to join with the others. She just hopes it’s enough even if it doesn’t feel like it. 


	6. A Mirror of Salt Or the Dangers of Falling Hard

Snow had always meant brown slush, slipping on unsalted sidewalks, ice in her ass and extra cursing. In her experience, it hadn’t remained white for too long. Emma had always hated it, even when she’d had heating and a roof over her head. Snow had never meant Christmas lights as soon as the first snowflake hit the ground. It’d never meant a roommate who’d burn pie attempting to surprise her _because I just wanted you to try my family's recipe._  People who knew her regular order at a diner, who’d remember to add cinnamon to her hot chocolate. And thing is? It’s not bad even for a cursed town. It’s not bad at all. It’s all new to Emma, that fullness she’d never thought she’d have or imagined was real. She knows, and this she won’t even try to fight, that in large part the fullness comes from Regina and Henry. Emma’s taking to wishing more and more that this isn’t just magic. More than she did before, because she wouldn’t be able to stand to be empty again. To stop feeling that spark at the tip of her fingers when Regina’s near her. She has to believe this is all real, that it won’t disappear when the curse is broken.

“You’re awfully quiet today.” Regina says taking a sip from her warm cider.

“It’s just so cold out.” Emma whines to make it seem like she hadn’t been thinking about her whole world falling apart.

For reasons she doesn’t understand Regina had decided to come out into the snow, feel the cold as it fell. And Emma had only mildly complained and given in because snow feels different now and she’d seen it as something to be taken. It would’ve been a lost moment otherwise. She doesn’t miss what this means, not for one second. Not even with her eyes fixed on the leafless apple tree in the backyard and with her hands gripping the warm porcelain mug. It’s special, and she’d always hated the word before. But it is, with the Sun almost down, making the day all blues and pinks and feeling the snow falling on her nose. Emma’s glad she has the sharpness of the cold on her cheeks to remind her that this is really happening, that it’s not some dream of the past.

“We could always go inside…” She says in that low and teasing voice.

“No!” Emma surprises herself. “I mean...I don’t mind.” She bites her lip looking at how snowflakes sit so still on the black of Regina’s hair.

“Alright then. If you don’t mind.” Regina says and she puts her hand over hers. Like it’s nothing, like that electricity didn’t turn stronger every time she did that. Like she doesn’t know, and Emma knows she does. This is why she’ll stay right here because sitting next to each other on this old bench, Regina threads their fingers together outside four walls.

“It’s nice,” It’s what she decides to say instead of telling her she loves her. Emma’s accepted this fact, just like she had accepted that curses and mermaids are very, very real. But this thing, this burning, had seemed even more impossible back when she didn’t believe in anything. “I never thought it could be like this.”

“What could be like this?”

“Just...this.” Emma shrugs knowing she’d meant to say life but she can’t just come out with it. Because three months ago all she had was a dingy kitchen table and half empty fridge, she isn’t sure she deserves it yet.

Emma guesses that Regina kisses her because they’re alone in this snow, maybe because she can’t say the words either. It has Emma thinking that things can change. Funny what falling hard can do to a person. Not that she had believed until this very moment. With her half frozen ass and her lips warm and tasting of apple.

“Was it like this when you were a kid?”

“Well, it looks the same,” Regina says turning away from her, eyes shifting to the house. “The house is just as white.”

Emma sighs and is about to tell her that she knows what she’d meant, _not the house,_ when Regina squeezes her fingers.

“To me life always felt like a flat circle,” Regina clears her throat and the electricity on Emma’s skin gets stronger. “I never felt it begin, like a cycle that never ends.” She’s trying to blink away whatever tears that may come her way. “I always wondered how life could be lived if it just kept repeating itself…”

“Like a more fucked up version of Groundhog Day?”

“Yes, you never find a way to make it stop.” Regina shakes her head as if to wish the thought away and then takes another sip from her mug.

It’s the curse, it’s the closest she’s ever come to talking about it. Emma’s never had a harder time holding back. She wants to say _I’ll get you out, I promise. Please just hold on. Please._ “Do you still feel like that?”

“Not now.” Regina looks at her again, with that thing that she hides from her and Emma’s heart fucking loses it. “Not with Henry.”

“I think...I think I know what that’s like.” She thinks of the fullness, of white snow in a backyard instead of slush in a street corner. She doesn’t say more because she’s afraid that one more word, one that may be wrong, will make this go away.

“Things seemed so stale for a long time. Like if I kicked anything it would break apart like rot. Especially after Daddy died..but then”

“Henry happened. Right?”

Regina’s smiles over a layer of guilt. “ He’s best thing that’s ever happened to me and I was so happy when they put him in my arms.  I thought that was it. That he’d be the answer to everything, that I’d instantly know how to fix  things. He’s made me better..but..I.. It’s unfair to him. Selfish.” This time she wipes away at her tears. “Maybe one day…” Regina makes it sound like hope is the most painful thing to have.

There’s nothing Emma can say to make it better instead she pulls her closer. Regina's breath is warm against her skin, it’s practically vibrating to meet it. She feels like Henry did at the beach not a week ago, how she felt sitting on the branch watching Ruby. Wanting, needing, to do so much but being frozen in her place. She feels useless.

“We should go inside.” Regina says quietly as she leaves Emma’s side and she winces at the loss of warmth.

She watches her go just for a moment. It’s time to stop looking for clues, stop following the trails of others. Now that she’s seen, now that she thinks she understands. The answers, she desperately hopes, are finally all here. Emma follows her into the house.

* * *

 

The attic, it would seem, is the one place that’s allowed to gather dust in the house. Emma’s coughing and fanning it away from her face. It’s another afternoon, her shift doesn’t start til later tonight. Her schedule is pretty much steady, and consists of mostly doing nothing that could be considered police work by anyone outside Storybrooke. Still, they are plotted slots on a schedule at the Sheriff’s department. It shouldn’t have mattered to anyone else, really. But today, through what she knows had been no accident, Regina had caught on her usual lunch run. Told her that she was aware that she had the afternoon off and there was a matter that required her attention. Still spoken in that code they use when outside the house, outside the snow covered backyard. Emma had been surprised she hadn’t just turned into a puddle right there on the street, because Regina has been keeping track of her shifts. And that’s not nothing. She’d come really damn close from breaking out a smile that was just Emma looking at Regina and not a small town deputy and the mayor.

The matter that required her attention is helping Henry take the outdoors Christmas lights down from the attic. No need to put them up just yet, Regina had said. That could wait until she was done with the meeting she couldn’t get out of. It’d been the slyest way to ask Emma to stay for Christmas decorating, it’d been impossible to hold off on a dumb grin because she'd never been asked. Never thought she would be. Regina had even tried to pass it off as some ridiculous Storybrooke tradition and she being the mayor couldn’t allow her house to go without those horrid, and vulgar multicolored bulbs they call decoration. Honestly, Emma’s looking forward to whatever joke she can crack about Regina enjoying the view while she’s up in a ladder. But for now, she’s choking on dust in the attic with Henry. It’s littered with boxes, old wooden furniture and a whole rack of dresses. There’s a whole vanity up here and Emma can see a younger Regina pulling the pins out of her hair, sighing with relief as thick black hair falls on her shoulders. She runs her fingers through the dresses that look nothing like she’d wear now, lacy and the wrong kind of delicate.There is even a school uniform neatly pressed, the white button up an impossible shade of white.

“Up there.” Henry says pointing at a box that sits stacked on top of tall pile of them. It’d been enough to jerk her hand away from the fabric of the dresses and snap her out of her thoughts.

“How did your mom even manage to get it up there? Jesus.” Emma asks standing on her toes to reach it. She stumbles backwards, damn thing is heavier than she had expected. Her elbow hits another box behind her and she feels it fall. Luckily nothing sounds broken. “What did I knock over?”

Henry doesn’t reply and when she turns around to set the box down he sees him kneeling and holding the yellowed tip of a photo album page.

“Kid?”

“I’ve never seen these.” He says, thoughtful.

Emma crouches next to him and watches him flip through the pages. She doesn’t know what family photos are supposed to look like, but she had never imagined they’d look like this. It’s practically the same photo in different versions, Regina grows taller in each page.The woman she knows to be Regina’s mother is always sitting on a chair that could pass for a throne, flanked by Regina and her father. Each photo is black and white, looking more like a creepy oil painting than a photo. No one’s smiling in them. Regina’s mother has this severe look to her, hands clasped on her lap. Regina has her chin out, like she’s facing a firing squad, her father looks like he’s been caught mid sigh. There are some others, a graduation day but not much else. There’s more of her father in Regina than her mother. Her brain does that thing again, when it tries to fill the gaps, and she can hear a nasty voice saying _your daughter_ over and over again whenever Regina had failed in some fucking imaginary way.

“She doesn’t look happy.” Henry looks up at her, wondering if it’s not just him.

“No, she doesn’t.” Emma places a hand on his shoulder. “But that was a long time ago, kid. It’s not like that now.”

He nods as he flips another page. There’s just one picture, not big enough to merit taking the whole page. It’s Regina, alone in the frame. Her hair is up and pulled backwards into a bun, so high that her whole face looks tight with pain. She’s in white dress and gloves that reach past her elbows. There’s a whole party happening behind her. Emma can’t stop looking into her eyes, she recognizes them from that first morning at the diner. Trying to swallow back her anger, her lips stretched into a smile that if the photo had been taken a second too late would have been a grimace.

“This was my grandparent’s place. Mom told me there used to be big parties here all the time,” He seems to be just as caught as she is. “Not her favorite thing, I think.”

“I’d guess not,” Emma takes the album from him and stands up. “Your mom isn’t much for people. Don’t tell her I said that.” She tries to sound casual, not wanting him to think any more about this. Regina wouldn’t want it either.

Emma turns to put the album back and fix the pile of boxes she’d disturbed. She hears Henry rummaging through the Christmas lights’ box and thinks it safe to swipe the photo. _October 27th, 1978_ the back reads. Regina is seventeen in this photo. She folds it in half and sticks it in her jeans’ back pocket before turning around to help Henry with the box.

“Come on, let’s go. We can sort them out in the living room.” She smiles at him.

They’re going down the rickety attic stairs, which Emma not so secretly worries might break when he asks “Do you really think things are different now?”

“I really, really do.” She says with a faith she’d never thought she’d feel. Emma doesn’t tell him that they’re not exactly what they need to be just yet, that maybe some day they will be better. But for now, it’s enough for him to know that at least things aren’t like in those unchanging black and white photos.

Later, when she’s balancing herself on the ladder, worrying that her stolen photo might slip out of her pocket, she cracks that joke she’d been holding out on. Perfectly aware of how tight her jeans are.

“Mind the falling snow, dear.” Regina says as slush from the gutters hits her in the face. The way she laughs, less restrained than she’s ever heard it, tells Emma that she isn’t wrong about her.

* * *

 

Emma should have known that despite being a cursed town there would be a thousand and one things related to Christmas. Going from the expected, like the lighting of the tree at the town square, and the ridiculous, like the Santa’s Workshop parade that seemed to be everyone’s favorite. All it had done was creep her out, especially since Mary Margaret and David had been voted to be Mr. and Mrs. Claus. _It’s the fifth year in a row_ , Regina had told her with an eyeroll as they watched them parade in a fake sleigh. Tonight is bonfire night, though. It’s uncomplicated, burning wood at the beach. It’s why she’s decided to mark it as the one town tradition she’ll enjoy without snark. It’s too damn cold to attempt to not look like a marshmallow, so she leaves the loft in an over sized coat that hides two other layers of clothing and a woolen hat that covers most of her forehead.

Everyone’s a little buzzed an hour into the thing, all hovering around fire like moths. Emma is no different, she stands listening to the crackling of the wood and not really minding the smoke that will probably take three washes to get out of her hair. She likes it that today the bonfire is lighting up the beach, that it’s the orange of the flames that spreads across the sand instead of the white of the moon. Her breath comes out in a thin mist as Emma looks away from the flames, pretending she isn’t looking for Regina. If there’s magic here maybe she can call her with her thoughts. Just like she’d woken Regina up that night she’d been so scared to be thrown out again. But a good ten minutes go by and she’s still standing by the fire alone. Maybe going around the party would help some, if nothing else it’s the logical thing to do.

“I would have thought those five layers would have kept you warm enough, Deputy.” Comes Regina’s voice behind her just when she’s about to turn on her heel. Figures she’d have this good a timing. And of course she doesn’t look like a marshmallow, in her long black coat and with her red cashmere scarf.

“Well, I was officially told that the town could not afford a sick officer. Or am I remembering it wrong?” Emma replies trying to keep to the act they had silently agreed to play, the one where they’re just two people whose paths happen to cross during the week.

“At least the Sheriff’s department has a brain like yours working for them.” Regina’s smiles turns sideways, the way it does when she’s pleased but tries to hide it.

“And don’t you feel safer because of it?” She bites down her own smile.

Regina is about to come up with some smart-ass comeback that doesn’t sound like one when Mary Margaret calls their names as she and David join them. The slight way Regina’s eyes narrow and her lips turn into a thin line makes it obvious it's unwelcomed. Not that Emma can blame her. Not at all.

“It’s a great night, isn’t it?” Mary Margaret says almost out of breath and with that reddish tint she gets around Regina sometimes. Emma hasn’t asked and judging by the way Regina tends to look away from Mary Margaret, she doesn’t want to know. “So glad you came, sweetie.” She rubs Emma’s arm in a way that makes her feel a lot younger.

“Course, yeah.” Suddenly she’s feeling too hot underneath her clothes but she doesn’t move to fix it.

“I don’t think the Sheriff would have let it go if you didn’t,” David chimes in with that good and open smile of his. “Or the mayor.” He adds completely oblivious and Emma feels like she’s barely keeping it together.

“Excuse me?” Regina asks losing her composure for a fraction of second, before she realizes it’s completely harmless. “Yes. It’d reflect badly on the office if public servants were to skip on town events.”

Emma expects Regina to excuse herself after clearing her throat, saying _deputy_ with a nod before leaving. But she stays, close enough that their hands brush once or twice. She thinks this what death fucking feels like. It should have been so easy to just take all of this in, the fire, the way it lights up Regina’s face, how the sparks dancing on her skin seem to be keeping up with the fire. It should be be so simple to pretend that there is no curse. She could, if Mary Margaret weren’t down right nestled in David’s arms. If their conversation weren’t so damn easy, nothing for the other to decipher. They can easily say each other’s name and talk about Sunday nights together and Christmas plans. Emma has to read every line in Regina’s face, she has to see Regina clasping her hands together and barely speak to her and when she does it’s not Regina but Mayor Mills. For the first time ever Emma wants to tell her to drop it because this hurts like a motherfucker. She has to be feeling it too, right? This envy and boiling anger. But she doesn’t try and stop her because this all they have.

“Well, I’m afraid I have to go make the rounds. It’s been pleasure, Miss Blanchard, Sheriff. Deputy.” There isn’t even a nod thrown her way and Emma’s glad her hands are stuffed in her coat’s pockets to hide how her nails are digging into her palms.

Still, she watches her turn at the empty candle stand and never resurface. Emma licks her lips and tries a smile at David and Mary Margaret. Makes a joke she forgets after a minute and then says something about getting a drink or slice of pie. She’s not really sure.  David makes a quip about her stomach but she waves them off and sets off in the direction where she’d seen Regina disappear. Emma’s focused on keeping one foot in front of the other. It’s not the fever before the curse, but it’s just as desperate. It’s just...she wants, she can’t help wanting. Her dumb heart, her jerk-off brain that doesn’t stop imagining the so many could-bes of the future. Shit, Emma is not going to cry. She’s not about reach Regina in tears. A shake of her shoulders does it as she gets to the stand and holds her breath. Regina has her back against the covered wooden backside and looks like she’d been holding her breath too.

“Finally.” She says trying to fake irritation.

“You know how they can..”

“Just get over here.” Regina doesn’t move an inch.

Emma ducks her head as she reaches her. It’s new, standing this close together out in the open like this. She doesn’t know what she should do other than keep her eyes on her face. Then that hand that has a mind of its own tangles Regina’s smooth black hair and Emma is just gone. Like she usually is when Regina is looking at her like that, like she matters so much. Like she wants to keep her.Time is frozen again, and it’s just them behind a stupid candle stand and the sound of the waves not too far away. Before she can remember how to breathe or anything else really, Regina moves forward and she feels the honey of her coffee in her lips. This is different, the kiss is stronger. It feels like it’s saying more than usual, everything they couldn’t tell each other standing by the fire. All those little things that don’t seem to matter but really make up the whole world. She knows what this is, needing to know that they have each other. That they’re real, that they can exist out here.

Emma’s a little light headed as they break away. She presses her forehead against Regina’s trying to steady herself and hears Regina’s barely-there laugh.

“Here, you’re a mess.” She pushes her slightly and wipes at the red Emma’s kissed off her.

“Always.”

Regina rolls her eyes and gives her a full smile before leaving.

* * *

 

Her legs have that nice heaviness to them after a good day. It hadn’t been special in any way, not really. Emma values days like this, they’re the ones when she makes up a vague excuse to Mary Margaret and ends up at the old house.She’s sitting back on the living room couch she feels warm all over and thinks that breathing has never been easier. The rug underneath her feet is softer than she thought it would be and the wiggling of her toes is the one thing she has enough energy for tonight. Henry is crossed legged in arm-chair with a book that’s bigger than him. Face identical to Regina's who is going over permits and plans for the remodelling of an old town building. It’s nearing Henry’s bedtime, she knows that. Almost nine, almost time for her to leave or pretend that she is in any case. He never questions her being here, never thinks it’s funny that Regina allows her in. Emma wonders if he’s ever asked Regina about her, what answer she’s given him. If she’s made up an excuse, if she’s told the truth. If he’s accepted it because Emma’s supposed to break the curse or because he likes her. The warmth makes her believe that this could hers. They could be hers.

“Mom…” Henry says looking up from his book. There is something she can’t really place in his eyes.

“Mhmm?” Regina replies circling something on the paper on her lap.

“Can I ask you something?” His voice is tentative, so unlike him. He’d usually just come say it. It makes her grip the armrest a little harder.

“Of course you can,” Regina caps her red pen and gives him her full attention. “What is it?”

“It’s just...we’re doing fairy tales for class,” At this Regina lets out a small huff and gives her a look like it’s Emma's fault because Mary Margaret’s her roommate. “There’s something I don’t really get. I mean I do but…”

“You’re having trouble seeing it?” Regina completes and Emma’s just watching them with that wary and nervous feeling at the tip of her stomach.

“Yeah. You know how Snow White wakes up because the Prince kisses her?”

Regina nods slightly, Emma thinks she recognizes a flash of fear but it’s gone too soon to call it anything.

“I guess I don’t get why that worked.” Henry cocks his head to a side and she suddenly gets what this about. Shit.This has nothing to do with an assignment.It’s the kid’s version of an interrogation, of gathering clues. There are wolves, mermaid, and witches living in fairy tales. Stories always play out how they’re meant to, with promises of a future.That book is Henry’s newest instruction manual on monsters and magic. She might pass out.

“Well, the Prince and Snow White loved each other, didn’t they?” Regina says taking a deep breath.

“Yeah.”

“True love’s kiss was enough to break...” Regina hesitates and tightens her grip on her pen, she knows Henry sees it too. This could prove to be too much and it’s driving Emma out of her mind. “To break the curse. Or that’s how I remember it, anyway.”

“I know _that._ I just want to know why it worked.” At this point kid’s probably hoping for directions on how to break the curse.Taking matters into his own hands. There’s that guilt of months back coming to sit on her chest, reminding her that she owes Henry something. That she might fail.

Regina turns to look at her and the best her brain can come up with is _well, fuck._ Her eyes are searching for something in her face, Emma can tell. And not knowing what that is scaring the hell out of her.

“I think, sweetheart, that the idea is that true love is supposed to overcome anything,” Regina says. “That’s the bottom line.”

“How can love just do that?” He runs a hand through his hair and Emma’s thinking that she wants to know too.

“Ha, well I guess we all like to believe that it can.” Regina smiles like it hurts through her none-answer. “Makes life easier, I suppose.”

Henry furrows his brow and Emma knows that look. It’s the one he gives her whenever he’s not satisfied with what she’s said and wants to keep probing. Lucky for her, he can read the situation and knows that it’s better to drop it. There’ll be no pointers on how to break the curse tonight. No matter how good a setup he had going for him.

“OK,” He says being terrible at hiding his disappointment.

Regina makes a show to look at her watch. ‘It’s time for bed. I don’t want you yawning tomorrow in class.”

Henry snaps the book shut and eases it off his lap as he stands up without a protest. An obvious sign that he’ll go up and obsess over what Regina had said. Or not said. He goes over to her and leans in to give her a kiss goodnight. He steps back, looking like he hadn’t known what to expect.

“I love you, mom.” The kid looks determined and it suddenly hits Emma what he’d tried to do. She hadn’t really known what it meant to be heartbroken until now.

“I love you too, hijo,” Regina beams at him. “So much.”

Henry shuffles away from her and stops at Emma’s side. He bends down and puts one arm around her neck. “Night, Emma.”

“Night, kid.” Her words are sticky and almost wet, her arm awkwardly over his back. Because she thinks Henry knows, knows that’ll walk up those stairs with Regina. And that maybe he hopes she can do what he couldn’t just now.

Regina watches them with a hand to her chest and then goes back to her paperwork without another word. Emma throws her head back, thinking about true love and curses that break with just a kiss. Real curses are a lot more complicated than that, she thinks. Now she’s wishing that all those times her lips had so much as brushed Regina’s skin had done the job. She wants that to be enough, Emma wants her love to be enough so badly. Shouldn’t it be? Isn’t magic real here, anyway? But in a world where Henry’s I love you’s don’t free his mother from her curse, Emma doesn’t stand a chance. All she has are angry hopes as she feels herself drifting off into sleep.

It’s Regina’s hand in her hair that wakes her up and she doesn’t startle. She opens her eyes slowly, already used to this life. To this place and Emma forces her that voice that screams danger to shut up as she gazes up at her.

“Are you coming up?” Regina is whispering, gentle like she would with Henry.

Emma nods with whatever strength she has left and takes her hand.

Feeling her eyes closing again and Regina’s breathing against her chest she doesn’t let go of those hopes.

* * *

 

It’s one of those nights that Emma can just _see_ the cold. The air feels lighter than usual and there’s that horrible itch to her hands and legs. It’s still a week out from the full moon, keeping track of the shadows on it is almost second nature to her now. The town is quiet, even if it’s just barely six. Winter does that to people, she guesses. The only thing she hears now is the snow crunching under her boots as she heads for the Bug, already mentally whining about how the heating will take longer to start up than the drive back to the loft. She’s playing with her keys when she hears an engine failing to start. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so pleased in recognizing Regina’s black Benz, Emma should probably wipe her stupid grin off her face before she reaches the car. To Regina’s credit, she keeps pushing the ignition and as she gets closer she can see signs of her cursing into the air. She’s so involved in her string of curses that she doesn’t notice Emma standing outside her window.

“Need a tow truck, Madam Mayor?” Emma says knocking on the glass. Regina’s scowl doesn’t loosen up. There’s a downright glare directed at her and if she didn’t know her better she might have taken it the wrong way.

“Oh shut up.” It comes out muffled and her breath fogs up the glass. This has Emma laughing so hard that she has to put her hands on her knees.

She steps out of the car in a huff, looking down at the thing not believing that it had the nerve to break down like this.

“Engine’s probably frozen,” Emma licks her lips that are on the verge of being chapped and just can’t resist. “You should also chain your tires. It’s a safety hazard.”

“Would you just take me home?” If she’d known where Emma had parked she probably would have left her behind.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Regina settles into the passenger seat of the Bug and Emma doesn’t think she’s ever seen her looking so out of place. She holds on poking fun at it because she realizes that this is the closest thing Regina’s been to being to her place. This stolen car actually is more of her than the loft is, has some of her own bruises and tears. If it weren’t for it breaking down on that night she wouldn’t even be here right now.

“You have the audacity to lecture me on safety when you’re driving around in this death trap.” Regina says fretting.

“It’s plenty safe, it’s been with me ten years.” Emma says starting the car and almost sighing in relief.

“That makes me feel a lot better.”

“I could always go back inside and call Audrey. Get her to give you a ride home.” She teases as she rubs her hands together.

“You could call her for both of us as we don’t seem to be going anywhere.” Regina replies stuffing her hands into her coat’s pockets.

“Oh come on, it just takes a little while to get going.”

“How unlike its owner.” And really Emma is about to fire back when she words sink in and she sees the shameless smirk on Regina’s face.

The engine kicks in in that moment and she feels this to be enough of a victory so she drives off with just a smile.

It’s not exactly clear to her how they just ended up driving aimlessly around town. Regina had mentioned Henry being at Lilo’s and Nani dropping him off at eight. Emma supposes she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had just not stopped driving. The yellow of the streetlights fills the car and gives Regina this unreal shine to her, soft and warm. It contrasts with the cold dark of the night. Emma is glad that time has stopped again, here in the car. That the air so charged with their familiar current, she can’t think of the right words to what this feels like. For a moment she becomes an observer, sees herself with hands relaxed on the wheel and Regina more at ease in her seat. The image could have belonged to someone else in the past. Not anymore. It’s that makes her reach for Regina’s hand and squeeze it, not knowing what else to do. Nothing else would have made sense.

When the Bug takes them to the covered bridge Emma takes a u-turn, heading back to to the house. Regina sighs heavily and pushes her head back against her seat.

“Did you ever just want to keep driving? Never stop?” Her voice sounds like it’s faraway, like she’s thinking about those boxes in her attic. Like she’s stuck in a black and white photo.

“Yeah, for most of my life.”Emma answers carefully. “Actually, that’s what I did. Run, drive, whatever it was.” She thinks of all the times she took her backpack and just cut loose. Sneaking onto buses when she was a kid. Leaving a city as soon as she scraped together gas money when she had the Bug with her.

“Why did you stop?”

Emma gazes at her and she isn’t brave enough to say the words. Especially when Regina’s eyes are darker in this light and there is only the sound of wheels on concrete. “Why didn’t you ever go?”

She hears Regina sighing and feels the sparks on her skin becoming hotter in anticipation.

“I was scared of life outside this. I was afraid of what I might find. There’s a breath that sounds like a small laugh, the kind she uses to cover up this kind of thing. “Better the devil you know.”

“Everywhere’s pretty much the same,” Emma doesn’t say that she had always thought she might sink if she stopped moving for even a little while. “Until it isn’t.”

“And Storybrooke is different?”

“I guess I am,” She presses her lips together, for courage. “I wanted to stay.”

Emma pulls up on her driveway, the streetlight at the corner is the only thing cutting through the night. She leans forward to kiss Regina, to say goodnight. As if they’ve done this a million times before. The small smile on Regina’s lips and knowing eyes as she settles back on her seat is the best fucking thing she’s ever seen. Emma’s sure.

“Thank you for bringing me home.”

“Just doing my civic duty.” Emma shakes her head looking at the disapproval in Regina’s expression. “Any time.”

“Goodnight, Emma.”

* * *

 

Her feet are frozen when she wakes up, it’s still dark outside. Emma turns to lie on her side and looks out her window. The day hasn’t begun yet, not officially anyway. If she could delay it she would. But it’s Christmas Eve, or it will be tonight, and that has always come around whether Emma has it wanted or not. It had always been there when it’d been nights at the center with an opened generic present, or nights up on a twin bed not really invited to be around a tree. It had never been something she looked forward to, and she supposes today is not much different in that sense. Because tonight is also the last full moon of the cycle, of the year. It’s going to be long day Emma, knows. It’s going to be hard with her heart beating this fast and her mind hazy with thoughts of Regina’s hair on white cotton sheets and the feel of Henry’s arms around her neck. All she’s done for a month is let herself fall harder and harder, press kisses and wishing that they would somehow do it. There has been no planning, no talks at the pier. Just days she couldn’t believe belong to her most of the time. Nothing that could fix things, Emma thinks with a heavy heart. Some investigator she turned out to be. _Fake_ investigator, she corrects herself.

Try as hard as she can sleep just won’t come back to her, and her feet aren’t getting any warmer. Emma reaches for the drawer in her nightstand and clicks her lamp on. She thumbs over her stolen photo of seventeen year old Regina. It’s been her go to thing when Emma feels her bed too empty and springy, when she’s obsessing over curses and everything she knows about Regina. Her dark eyes draw her in her every time, like one of those paintings that follow you across the room. So young, and it hits her just how much time Regina’s spent under her curse. It’s an important moment, captured by an unknowing photographer. To them she had probably looked spoiled, a teenage girl who just didn’t want to be at her parents’ party, bored out of her mind. But she knows that look, the one that tells her that something is just about to explode out of her. And she’s trying her hardest to keep it all in.Stuck between who she is and who she thinks she should be.  

Emma has the crazy thought that maybe this picture had been meant to be found, that she’d been meant to see it. Maybe it’d been just luck. Same way it was luck some creep posted an ad for in paranormal magazine and Henry happened to find it. Cosmic accidents, coincidences or even fate. It doesn’t matter what she calls it, she’s here now, holding the photo between her fingers. First light filters through her window and she's pressing it into her palm, like someone praying for an answer might hold on to a crucifix. Thing is, Emma’s fucking terrified. Because she knows that this has to end tonight, one way or another. More than once she’d wanted to forget about the curse and sometimes she’d almost succeeded. When the smell of apples and sugar would envelope her in the evening, when Henry had piled on her back and Regina had looked like she trusted her with her entire life. The day Emma’s r's  had fallen flat but Henry and Regina's had trilled so strongly before an almost identical laugh. But then there’s also the way her eyes get wet and things she can’t talk about. There’s Mayor Mills and Deputy Swan, leaving bed before anyone can spot her stepping out the door. There’s tearing skin to shreds, lonely howls and sad songs. She’s a fucking coward, just for a few moments, because she’s afraid that if the bad is taken away all the good will go with it. Emma sighs as her feet dangle from her mattress. It’s time for the new day to begin.

Morning hadn’t seemed too bad, Mary Margaret who gets this childish energy when the full moon is up, had filled the loft with the smell cinnamon and had insisted Emma have breakfast with her. Not that she had minded, the cinnamon pancakes had taken her mind off photographs and curses for a while. She’d noticed how Christmas Eve had gone by unmentioned, Mary Margaret only speaking about Christmas morning and a dinner. She’d talked about present wrapping, and things she remembers when she was a kid. There has never been time to discover what is hiding underneath her skin and Emma’s body hasn’t picked up the curse so much as she could on the others. It doesn’t ensnare her as tightly, she supposes. There are still things she hasn’t figured out, and she definitely doesn’t have a plan for today. The thought worries her as she swivels in her chair at the Sheriff’s department, hiding out as she is. Regina is doing the same, she knows.

Her version of hiding is different than Emma’s. She’d briefly mentioned having to spend the day cooking for the lunch the Church holds on Christmas Day. She can picture her now, cutting a little too sharply into carrots and onions, glass full of wine trying to quiet her thoughts. Stereo playing in the background with something that would temper her anger, that is just threatening to cut out of her skin. Fighting back her tears as she stands on the tips of toes to reach the top shelf. Emma imagines Henry coming down and Regina breathing in, and smiling through her pain. She sees her smoothing down his hair and asking if he’s excited about Christmas tomorrow. Henry might nod, ask if he can have a cookie and go back up to his room, knowing that today is hard for her. That today she’s not really herself except she is. All these images are going to make her go insane. Hiding out may be the smartest game plan but she is going to have pass on it. _Shit, it’s now or never_.

Emma’s whole body is shaking again, she’d decided to walk over to the house out of habit. Her back is clammy with sweat inside her clothes and her exposed skin feels like it’s stretched too thin and  like it might start bleeding from the cold. By the time she reaches Regina’s front door she’s a wreck. But there’s no going back now, she rings the doorbell hurting all over. Henry opens the door and he’s looking at her puzzled, his arms folded across his chest. She knows what he’s thinking, that tonight is an important night and here she is, with nothing.

“Hey, kid.” Emma says trying to sound apologetic.

“Henry, who is it?” Regina’s voice comes from somewhere inside the house.

“Just Emma!” He shouts looking like he hasn’t decided to let her in or not. “What are you doing here? It’s the third moon tonight.” He whispers stepping aside.

“I’m working on it.” She whispers back, feeling the photo in her coat’s pocket.

He scowls at her, more upset than she’s ever seen him. “Mom’s in the kitchen.” It’s louder, meant for Regina to hear. Emma feels her stomach drop as she heads towards the kitchen and he leaves her side. There are too many ways this could go fucking wrong.

The kitchen is covered in steam and it has Emma wondering if it’s coming from the stove or Regina. There is faint French song playing, it’s lower than the sound the knife hitting the cutting board. There are beads of sweat on her forehead and her eyes are darker shade of brown when she looks up to see Emma come in, that thing behind them swirling. Same as it did that first morning.  Her short hair is curling at the ends, her face on the verge of hardening. Her sleeves are rolled up and there’s flour spread all over her apron. Were it another day Emma wouldn’t still be standing by the door.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you.” Regina says turning her attention down to the raw potatoes on the counter.

“Yeah,” Emma says shrugging her shoulders. “Slow day and all. Thought I might come and help you instead.”

“Thank you but I can manage.” Her tone is clipped. Push her the wrong way and she might explode. “You can stay.” Regina adds with a glance.

Emma nods and takes her place at her usual bar stool, and sheds her coat on the one beside her. She doesn’t move to help only watches Regina move around the kitchen, steps still just as delicate but painful as she ever seen them. Like she’s itching to run away or collapse, whichever comes first. It’s that same act from before, except it’s easier to juggle things in the kitchen. Regina can pretend that she really is just frustrated from the heat, from a bad egg in her mix, from a burned sauce. That’s what Emma sees, excuses and cover ups from what simmers beneath. And hasn’t she had enough of it? She doesn’t know how to even begin talking about this, watching her fingers carefully avoid the knife’s blade. Hearing her hum alongside the music, like that will quiet the noise inside her head.

“Kid told me there used to be big parties here. Not just on Christmas.” Even if the words feels like a mistake they need to come out.

“What?” Regina looks like Emma had just snapped out of her thoughts. “Yes. Mother’s favorite thing to do.”

“What were they like?”

“Long,” She takes a deep breath to steady herself. “String quartets were brought from the city. Mother served champagne she knew townspeople could never afford. Daddy with a coke and rum in his hand the whole night.”

“I’m sorry.” Emma is not really sure what she's sorry about.

“Not your fault,” Her words are measured again, face careful to not break in whatever might give her away. “It's all in the past now.”

“Mhmm.” Emma replies knowing what she's about to bring it all back to her and hating it.  She wishes she would have found a better way, one that wouldn't hurt as much. Watching Regina’s lips twitch and the air heavier than she’s ever felt it, Emma digs into her coat and removes the stolen photo. She lays it flat on the table, embarrassed of the fold that had ruined it.

“What is this?” Regina asks her putting down her knife, fighting a scowl.

“An old photo...”

“I know what it is, Emma.” Regina’s nostrils are flaring. “Why do you have it?”  

Despite feeling like the world is crashing down on her, there is small part of her that is screaming in celebration. This photo _is_ important. It will tell her something. Even if Emma wants the ground to swallow her whole at least she knows she's on the right track.

“It fell out of an album when I was in the attic with Henry.”

“And what? You decided to keep it?” Regina's knuckles turn white around the counter.

“I’m sorry, I didn't think…”

“That's right, you didn't think!” This time Regina lets her lips settle into a snarl. “What did you want with it anyway?”

Emma doesn’t have an answer for that, not even the truth. She’d taken it because it’d felt like the right thing to do. “I don’t know.”

Regina snatches the photo away from her, looking down at like she’s just seen a nightmare. “Why are you showing me this now?”

“Thought it was about time I gave it back.” She lies.

“Oh that’s it?” Her voice turns harsh and it’s cutting deep into Emma. So deep she almost forgets this is what she had meant to do. “Why don’t you tell me the truth?” Regina challenges and crosses the distance between them.

“Only if you start.” Emma says getting to her feet. Really, she’s glad that are no tears nearing her eyes. She wants to stop, she has never hated doing anything more in her entire life. Fuck, fuck.

“What is the hell is that supposed to mean?” Regina blinks like she’s been dealt a blow.

“It means whatever you want it to mean.” Emma echoes her words from all those months ago when all she wants to do is say _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ and pull her into her arms.  

Regina is up in her face, her lips full of warning. “I suggest you drop whatever game you’re playing, dear.”

“Or what?” Emma’s mouth is dry.

“I can remove you of my life as easily as I let you into it.” There is something dark swimming in Regina’s eyes, she can see it now. A dark violet cloud just underneath the brown. She wonders if this is her magic, just waiting to burst out of her.

“You’re lying.” Emma has to believe that she is, that it’s all because midnight is drawing closer and closer. Still, she can feel a cold sweat on her back and bile up in her throat because a big part of her is scared that it could be the truth.

“Am I? They haven’t moved apart, Emma can smell wine in Regina’s breath. ”How would you know, Miss Swan?”

She almost wants to check herself for bruising because the whole of her body hurts like it never has before. The electricity between is just going wild, jumping all over her body. It’s making her head throb and closing up her throat.

“With you Regina, I always know when you’re lying,” She swallows back and presses her nails hard against her palm. “And right now? I think you’re scared.”

“ _Of what?_ ” Regina hisses back at her.

“You tell me,” There’s this hope she holds that Regina really will tell her the truth, that this can all end now. That the curse can be broken in steamy kitchen, with the sound of stereo in the background and bubbling sauce on the stove. “You can tell me.” In a moment of pure stupidity, Emma reaches for her hand. Feeling Regina’s skin on hers she sees the woods, sharp rocks and the foam of the water.

“Get out!” Regina backs away from her, clutching her hands to her chest like they had they had just been burned. “Out. Get out!” All Emma can see now is the way her eyes have turned hard and wet.

Why would things be this easy? Why did she think this would work for something other than a clue?

“Merry Christmas, Madam Mayor.” Emma mumbles as she grabs her coat and heads out the house.

She slams the front door closed and doesn’t stop herself from crying. Emma runs down the road while she’s still in one piece.

* * *

 

It’s only her and dusty file cabinets at town hall. Emma is pretty sure her toes might break off and her throat is sore from almost falling apart on the way over here. There’s a stickiness in her eyes she hasn’t bothered to wash off, she’s too busy trying to keep standing. She’s staring at the old Storybrooke map she and Henry pulled out. Like that’ll help any. The three pins they stuck on it are still there. What a joke, that’s what she’s thinking. To think that there was logic to this thing, to think she could have figured out. The yellow light from the one bulb is making the map even older, giving the pins long shadows on the paper. Maybe if her eyes stay focused on them she can hold herself together, pretend she hadn’t gone and fucked up the best thing in her life. All she’d gotten out of it was her brain filling in the gaps again, trees, stone, and water. Shit. Emma pushes the table away from her not knowing what else to do with herself other to just want to tear everything to pieces. With a short breath she looks down at it again and the pins’ shadows are longer and the all they seem to point to one direction. Her fingers run through the thin and delicate lines on the map, following them to one small spot on the paper. Somewhere between the woods and the sea. Emma is circling the place when the door bursts open.

“Emma!” Henry says, the kid’s hair is a mess and his cheeks are pale. “You...you didn’t leave!”

“No, kid. I’m still here.” Her voice breaks as she stands upright to really look at him. His eyes are glassy too and his scarf is barely still on him. He’d ridden his bike here in a rush. “I guess you heard us back at the house?”

“Yeah.” His eyes are fixed on hers.

“I’m so sorry, Henry. I…” Emma stammers and suddenly he is running up to her and puts his arms around her waist.

“Why did you do that?” His voice quiet. “Say all those things? Mom...mom she hasn’t stopped..she’s..not good.”

“I was trying to figure something out. And maybe I went about it the wrong way, I don’t know.” She rubs his back as she feels her chest tighten up.

“And did you?” He clear his throat to try and make himself sound bigger than he feels. “Did you work it out?”

“I think I got something.” She looks down at him and sees a glimmer of hope there. “Can you hand me a pin from back there?” Emma nods in the direction of a cabinet.

Henry nods and wipes his eyes as he steps away from her.

“Here.” He hands her the pin looking confused but a little less grim.

Emma carefully places it on the spot the shadows meet.“I think that’s where it all started.”

Henry’s eyes light up as he looks down at the new pin. “Ban’s Caves?” The name makes her think of water hitting large and black rocks, of running past trees and finally, finally finding them. That’s it.

“You know them?” Emma tries to sound like she’s excited and not petrified.

“I know of them. They’re not safe,” Henry furrows his brow as if he’s put it together. “No one goes near. You think this is where mom will be tonight?”

“I’m not sure, kid.” She thinks he spots the lie just as easily as she spots them in Regina.

“You have to take me with you!” He raises his chin and narrows his eyes and it’s a little scary to see him so determined.

“Henry, no. You’re not coming, not this time.” Emma kneels down to look him in the eye, somehow thinking this is how she’ll get through to him.

“I have to!” He insists. She knows what he’s thinking, still thinking about true love. Of the one moment that would make it all OK. That maybe this time a kiss on her cheek will do it.

“We don’t know what happens to her down there,” Emma grabs his hands and really fucking tries to keep calm, to keep from crying. “We don’t know what she turns into. She wouldn’t want you to see her like that.”

“I don’t care what she is! She’s still my mom!” He shakes her grip from his hands and she feels like there isn’t any air left in her.

“I know..Henry..I,” Emma pinches her eyes shut just for a second. “Think of what would happen if you went. What would happen if she ended up hurting you? Kid..she’d..she’d never forgive herself.”

“Yeah, but that’s not stopping _you_ from going.” And it’s so firm that he has Emma believing that her place with them is not imagined. Not given to her by magic.

“No, it’s not.” Her lips tremble into a not-even-there smile. “ But you brought me to break the curse, remember?”

Henry shoulders sag as he nods. He unstraps his watch from his wrist and hands it over to her. “So you don't miss it. It has an alarm set for midnight.”

There’s nothing else Emma can do put pull into her arms and breathe in his strength.

* * *

 

The moon is too bright, too white, Emma really wishes it wasn’t. She’d seen it rise, go from red to orange to finally settle on this white that makes her feel so exposed. Her eyes are red and she hurts all over as she makes her way through the trees. It’s almost midnight, she’ll be lucky if she gets to Ban’s Caves on time. On time to...do whatever it is that she needs to do. There’d been a lot of moments in her life when she thought she’d known what fear felt like, especially that first night in the woods. Emma thought she’d felt it again this morning with her cold feet and tight chest. No, this what real fear feels like. Out running not for her life but for Regina’s. To know that if she fails then she’s hurt her in a way no one deserves to be. It would have all been in vain and Emma will have to gather her three fucking miserable boxes and drive across the covered bridge back to her world. To where there are no sparks on her skin, where it’s just a little bit colder and there is no one and nothing worth remembering. This is what it feels like to have her heart ripped out and held out in front of her. Gasping for air and feeling blood running cold in her veins.

The sea is rough tonight, she’d heard Regina describe it once as angry during a stormy night. As if she'd felt it in her body, Emma should have known right there. Should have seen it sooner. The water is rushing against the stone, it’s so strong Emma’s worried it might come crashing down. The tide is high and there is one opening in the stone to where the it flows. It has taken all evidence of Regina ever coming this way but there is their electricity in the air,  calling to her. Emma shakes her shoulders and steps into the cold water. It reaches her knees and suddenly understands why Ari would want the sea to take her away. How it’d just be easy to float away in its salt. The water seeps into her boots and she can feel the rocks beneath her, getting bigger and sharper as she heads into it, following where the moon is pointing her to.

“Should’ve bought that damn wet suit after all.” Emma mutters as she begins shivering from the cold. She’d love to be pretend that it’s her biggest concern right now. Not the missing minutes til midnight. Not Regina surrounded by nothing but stone and water.

It’s more than just a cave, Emma realizes quickly enough. There’s something vibrating off its walls and it looks like it’s been shaped over the years to fit a need. The tide gets lower until she’s walking on slippery stone and rocks again. She uses the stalagmites, that don’t seem exactly too natural, to brace herself as she goes along. It’s hard keeping herself upright, to try and ignore the literal damn heart ache she’s feeling in her whole body. Emma just wants...she just wants Regina. Find her, whatever she is under her curse. She’s never cared what the moon turns her into, especially not now. The cave is deeper than she thought it would be, digging deep into the side of the cliff. It’s like a maze. Just when she’s wondering how the hell she’ll ever reach her in time Henry’s watch goes off in her front pocket. Midnight. Maybe it’s already too late, maybe she was wrong and trees, stone and water hadn't meant anything at all. Emma’s knees give in and hit the rock. Her skin broke with the fall and she feels the sting of the water and her blood running down her leg. Shit. Fuck. Fuck. She doesn’t think she has the strength to cry when a dark violet mist surrounds her. It’s like it’s breathing life into her, pulling her up from the ground. Almost slipping, Emma gets back on her feet and follows it deeper into the dark.

She shivers in her clothes, wet and bloody with only the violet that must be Regina’s with her. Water drips onto the ground and the tide comes in quietly from the outside the deeper she gets. Emma cannot be certain what happened in these last seconds. If it’s the cold air she’s breathing or the feeling their electricity flow so easily and bounce against the stone but she starts believing that things can change. Just like she had on that afternoon watching the snowfall in Regina’s backyard. _Things can change_. She’s living proof of it right now, isn’t she? Making her way through the dark of a cave when she never thought she’d stay when she first crossed that bridge. Doing this because she’d fallen in love, because a boy had put his faith in her when he had no reason to. Maybe Emma doesn’t know how to break this curse. But at least she can face whatever it is that is awaits at the end of the mist of violet. It leads her past small pools of water, dark and still, and towards what seems to be an exit to the sea. It’s no longer dark, the white of the moon filters into the cave, reflected by sea.

The moonlight shines so bright on the sight in front of her. Emma contains her gasps as barely keeps herself standing against the rock. It’s Regina, just Regina. She’s in the white dress she’d worn when she was seventeen, gloves reaching past her elbows. Her black hair pulled on so tight into a bun. The fabric of the dress floats all around her, waist deep in cold water as she is. Regina looks at the moon, like she’s scared to look away. Afraid of what she is without it, afraid of what she is under it. Emma tastes salt on her lips and it’s only then she realizes that she’s crying. Out of all the sights she’d seen, the torn skin, the broken bones, the struggle to breathe this is the most terrifying. The most devastating, the thing that threatens to tear her insides to shreds. The skin on her split knee bends painfully as she takes her first step forward.

“Regina?” Emma calls out to her.

She turns away from the moon to look at her, her expression is just what had been in her steam filled kitchen today. Furious and raw,  white teeth bared in threat.

“Go away!” Regina hits the water pushing it in Emma’s direction. She’s struggling, like she’s trying to move forward. To leave the water that keeps her trapped as long as the moon is up.  

“No.” Emma tries to sound firm, to keep holding onto her strength.

“LEAVE!” This time it comes out desperate, like it had begun in anger and ended in a plea. Her eyes are dark with her magic and it surrounds her now, and Emma knows that she is trying her hardest to rein it in. Fighting for control.

“No.” Emma repeats as she walks toward her, steps slow and hands shaking.

“What are you doing?!” Her words can’t decide between rage and fear, like she’s cornered and afraid she might bite.

“I’m coming in.” Emma replies as gently as she can manage as she steps into the water.

Regina backs away from her in a rush, her magic soaks Emma with seawater in attempt to push her away. But she keeps moving forward because she knows that tonight things will be different, tonight things will change.

“I’m not going anywhere, Regina.” She says feeling the salt in her wound, looking at the red that’s coming out of her.

“Why not?!” She spits out at her as Emma draws closer. “Aren’t you afraid?!”

“Out of my mind,” Emma confesses as she comes closer and sees the hurt of Regina’s eyes. “Not of you. Never of you.”

“Just leave me.” Regina’s voice is barely louder than the water. “You don’t understand.”

“I think I might. Regina,” Emma’s  voices breaks over her name. “Please.”

“LOOK AT ME!” Regina yells at her frantically trying to tear at her dress but the fabric won't budge. “Look at what I am!”

“I am.” It hits her then what the curse really is, understands why a kiss cannot break it.

“How can you want this?! This horrible, hateful thing?!”

“Regina…”

“No!” She breathes as if she’s gathering her strength. “Did you know? That I’ve known about you all along? About what you were trying to do?” Angry tears roll down her face as she lashes out at her.

Emma’s stunned into silence.

“I knew you were trying to break this..this thing! This curse! And I _let_ you try. Even if I know there’s nothing that can be done. But still, I allowed it because I wanted so badly...I needed you. What does that make me?!”

Emma reaches for her gloved hand and feels energy rushing through her. Magic. Before she knows what she’s doing Emma pulls Regina into her arms.

“It makes you human.” As Regina’s forehead touches shoulder she feels the parts of the old Emma wash away. The parts that have always made run before she’s kicked out are floating out to sea.

“Get out while you still can, Emma.” She whispers against her jacket.

“I won’t,” She wraps her arms around her waist. “I can’t. I’m staying as long as you’re here.”

“This isn’t yours to fix.” Her voice is tired and raspy. “I can never take it back it, the magic that I spilled. It can’t be undone.”

“Yes, it can. We can do it.” Emma feels her body hum again, the salt stinging her and the warmth of Regina’s body against her own.

“No, no. It's impossible.” She shakes her head and trembles under her hands.

“Look at me.” Emma tells her feeling both of their chests rise unsteadily against each other. “Regina, look at me.”

Through her tears and shakes of the head, Regina’s slow to lift her head from her shoulders. Her eyes make their way up her face to finally find Emma’s eyes own. It feels like the whole world is shifting as she holds her gaze, determined to never let go. She wants Regina to see herself in her eyes, reflected in them. To understand that there is  nothing horrible or monstrous about her. If there’s any magic at work in this tide of violet and red, she wishes for it make Regina see who she truly is. That person who will stop at nothing to protect her son, who within a second can be ignited with burning anger. Regina who holds onto her at night and mumbles nonsense in her sleep. Whose eyes turn challenging even if her voice remains tempered. The woman whose favorite apron is an ugly stained one because her son had given it to her. Someone can easily lay down a string of curses as she can a soothing song.Regina who had never been taught how to love and does it with all her strength. Someone who despite all the odds is still here, who holds her head high above any whispers. Regina who doesn’t know how to fucking lose a fight. Who Emma has known her to be all along. There are no parts of her that need to be hidden away to be loved.

“See?”  Emma whispers like it’s a spell.

Regina’s eyes become clouded with even more violet and the tide begins rising even more around them. The mist covers them completely and Emma feels herself falling into the water with Regina in her arms. Not knowing what’s happening, if she had only made things worse. If the curse had been broken. The moonlight is piercing through the dark of the magic and she can only see Regina’s closed eyes and feel her slipping from her grasp. And she panics.

“Regina?! Regina..wake up. Please, wake up!” Emma hands smooth away the hair away from her face. Hair that is now short and loose instead of long and tight. Her white dress is gone and so are her gloves. There’s only the blouse with her rolled up sleeves and the pants she’d been wearing today. Her eyes flutter and Emma smiles and smiles because they’d done it. Regina coughs, like she had just been saved from drowning. Like she can breathe again.

“Hi.” Emma says having nothing better to say as she takes all of her in.

Regina pulls her down into the water and kisses like before, like never before. It’s not desperate, but soft. Patient, like they have all the time because they have managed to bend it. The kiss is lighter on their lips and has Emma laughing through it. They pull each other up, soaked to the bone and aching all over. Their electricity going crazy, not deciding where it wants to be. Gold and red where their fingers meet. Magic, their magic. Emma never thought that believing could be like this. This is real, this is hers. Theirs.

“You stubborn idiot.” Regina’s dark lips can’t hold in her smile. “Thank you.”

“I just helped a little,” She tells her shaking her head. “It was all you.”

Feeling the sway of the water against their bodies, Emma kisses her again under the white of the moon.   



	7. Epilogue or How Tolstoy was Wrong

_There is a large house overlooking the sea in town. It’s the finest house there, old as the town itself. Made of wood and brick, all white. It has an attic and a basement, floorboards that creak and an apple tree in its backyard. It’s a happy home, so different from the home it had once been. It had taken many years, a son running away one day and a stranger returning him under the full moon. The girl who had loved the crispness of the autumn air, who had never measured up to her mother still lives there. She looks at her son and the woman who had once been a stranger, and feels the warmth of her magic within her. It’s pouring out her in waves, and she believes that this what is meant by peace. They are all wearing ugly sweaters on an early winter’s night. Nearly a year after her curse had been broken. It’s a week away from its anniversary, ten days from Christmas’s Eve. It’s a full moon tonight, the last full moon of the year._

_Her feet are tucked away under her, the violet of her lone magic does not surround her, she is not fighting the call of the moon and sea. She is in the room that had once held the party that had damned her for eighteen years. Her family sits on the spot where she had danced that night and instead of whispers, lies passing as truths, she hears how they talk over an old black and white movie. She understands that the whispers have not vanished, she simply can no longer hear them. They don’t have power over her anymore. It’s an ordinary night, like every other night in the last year. Like they hadn’t been for so long. She can’t stop smiling._

_“Put it back. Bury it where you found it. You have read the curse. You dare defy it?” A man in the movie says, sound fuzzy with age._

_A year ago she would have shuddered hearing the words from a seemingly innocent line. Now she just takes a deep breath and remembers that she’s free. Outside this old house the town remains largely the same, people fish just the same, snow still falls and there is still a parade full of reds and greens that honors old traditions, but inside this house everything is different. There are no balls, no string quartets, no champagne.  In their place are a stereo that plays for three different kind of personalities, the bubbling of soup, the smell of apples, sugar and hot chocolate. There are no tricks or magic lessons to be learned the hard way. No tests meant to be failed. This magic is the easy kind between them, the one made of small words and acts. Warm and simple, incapable of casting curses, capable of healing and childish glee. There are no crowds gathered here, it’s only ever just them. Just the three of them._

_The once stranger leaves her spot on the floor and buries herself into her side. She has known from the first moment she laid eyes on her that her magic calls to her, she has known her to be special for so long. She thinks of all the times she’d averted her eyes, in fear that she would see how much she wanted and needed, scared she'd see who she truly was. To her surprise, she always had. Her mother had always resented her soft heart, had always thought her weak and insufficient, but now she sees. It could be called magic, she supposes, what had broken the curse that night. In truth, there had been nothing stronger and warmer that the gold and red at the tip of their fingers. But she knows the full truth lies somewhere else, removed from spells and curses. Her once stranger had merely held her reflection in her eyes and in a moment of full clarity, she’d recognized who blinked back at her. There’d been nothing ugly there._

_“You know, I don’t think most mothers would let their eleven year-old watch this.”  She says lacing and unlacing their hands together._

_“Good thing we’re not like most, then.” She replies watching the red of her sparks meet the gold of hers at the tips of their fingers. “Besides, I don’t think this frightens him in the least.”_

_“No. Kid’s tough.” And on cue he laughs at the screen and she feels lips forming into a smile against her neck._

_“It’s just an old movie,” He says without turning to look at them. “The make-up is not even that good.”_

_“I know, sweetheart.” She replies through her smile._

_“Rude.” Her blonde hair brushes her face as she bends forward  to throw a pillow at him._

_“Hey!” He laughs that carefree laugh that has become the norm._

_The room glows white from the screen, and the moment strikes her. Her son holding his chin between his hands, their breathing so easy. It’s small, but it feels so big. Never had the girl imagined that she will grow up to find this. She had never known it, and she couldn’t place the feeling when it first bloomed. All she had known were a father’s apologies in way of love. She had never known that happiness was something she was entitled to, she had never been told. But now she knows, and lays claim to it in every possible way. This is hers, this is theirs and it cannot be taken away._

_“I love you.” It’s not the first time she’s said it, but she’d discovered that once she’d started she couldn’t stop saying it._

_“I love you too.” She says back quietly, still taken aback by the words. A kiss follows it, like it always does. One that she will never take for granted._

_And there, in the warmth of their home on a winter’s night she lets herself go and through the window looks up at the full moon._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Caraluna [ ART ]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8790868) by [mippippippi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mippippippi/pseuds/mippippippi)




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